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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






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UNITED STATES OF AMEBIOA. 



OUTLINES 



OF 



CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY. 



BY 

Eev. GEORGE HUNTINGTON, 

Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, 
Carleton College. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1885, 
BY GEOKGE HUNTINGTON. 



Electrotyped and Printed by 
Stanley & Usher, 171 Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass. 



PREFACE 



The following 1 brief history of Congregationalism 
was written at the suggestion of the Rev. Robert 
West, the editor of The Advance, and was published in 
a series of articles in that paper. It was received 
with a degree of favor wholly unexpected by the 
author; and its publication in book form has been 
urgently called for by many esteemed brethren more 
competent than he to judge of its probable utility. 

Its scope and purpose may be easily stated. It 
reports no newly discovered facts, and no new explo- 
ration of the original sources of history, but aims 
to present, in condensed form, some of the more im- 
portant results of scholarship in tins field of study. 
Fortunately for our denomination, we have no lack 
of sucli scholarship. All that splendid erudition, crit- 
ical acumen, and lifelong patience and application 
could do for the preservation of every discoverable 
detail of our history, has been done. 

But the very richness of the field has made it inac- 
cessible. The most valuable books upon the subject 
are so voluminous and so costly that many pastors 
can not, and most laymen will not, purchase or peruse 
them. It is in the hope of bringing the cardinal facts 



iv Preface. 

to the attention of some who might not elsewhere find 
them, and of persuading others to study the works 
which treat the theme more adequately, that these 
outlines are written. 

It is needless to say that the author is indebted 
to former historians for what is most valuable in his 
work, and offers no statement except upon recognized 
authority ; although the necessary limitations of such 
a book forbid the citation of authorities in detail, 
or of extensive quotation. He could on no account 
omit, however, to acknowledge Ms indebtedness to 
the works of the Rev. George Punchard and the Rev. 
Henry M. ]3exter, d.d., particularly to the " History 
of Congregationalism," by the former, and to " Con- 
gregationalism as Seen in its Literature," by the 
latter, — works whose appearance marks an epoch 
in our literature, and whose contents ought to be so 
familiar to Congregationalists as to render such 
meager outlines as these unnecessary. 

GEORGE HUNTINGTON. 
Cakeetox College, 

NORTHFIELB, MlNN., June, 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Congregationalism of the Early Churches. 

Page 
What Congregationalism is — Teachings of our Lord. — The 
apostolic churches — Church polity in the first two centuries 

— Hierarchical tendencies — Church and State — The first 
Separatists: Novatians, Donatists, Luciferians, Paulicians, 
Waldenses 1 

CHAPTER II. 

English Congregationalism in Conflict with 

the Papacy. 

Pagan England — Papal England — Results of the Norman Con- 
quest— Corruption of the Church — John Wiclif — "Poor- 
priests "and Lollards — Persecution 14 

CHAPTER III. 

English Congregationalism in Conflict with the 

Established Church. 

Causes of the English Reformation — Henry VIII, as a papist 

— Henry VIII, as a pope — Henry's Lollardism — Bible trans- 
lation—Intolerance and persecution — Edward VI— Bloody 
Mary— Elizabeth — Protestantism without toleration .... 27 

CHAPTER IV. 
Separation from the English Church. 

The three religious parties — What separation involved — At- 
tempts to enforce conformity — Condition of the Church — The 
Frankfort exiles — Lambert's plan — Browne and Brownism 

— The London Separatists — Barro we — Penry — Johnson — 



vi Contents. 



Page 

The Martin Marp relate Tracts— Congregational martyrs— 
James I — Congregationalism of the Separatists 38 

CHAPTER V. 

From Scrooby to Plymouth Rock. 

The Scrooby church — Brewster, Clyfton, Robinson — From 
Scrooby to Amsterdam — From Amsterdam to Leyden — The 
Leyden church — Congregationalism of the Pilgrims — The 
emigration to America 51 

CHAPTER VI. 
Puritan Colonization. 

Non-conformist migrations to America — Virginia — The Bermu- 
das — New Providence — Plymouth Colony and church — 
Massachusetts Bay — Churches formed — Secondary migra- 
tions — Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire — Rhode Island — 
Roger Williams — The Antinomian controversy — Congrega- 
tionalism in New York and New Jersey 63 

CHAPTER VII. 

Native American Congregationalism. 

Two types of Non-conformity — Early usages — Fellowship of 
the churches — General synods — The Half-way Covenant — 
Education — Journalism and authorship — The New England 
theocracy — Plantation Covenants — Persecutions — Roger 
Williams — The Quakers — The Episcopal controversy .... 78 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Last Half of the Colonial Period. 

Condition of the churches — The Indian question— The effects of 
the Half-way Covenant — Consociationism — Spiritual decline 

— The Great Awakening— Gains during this period 94' 

CHAPTER IX. 

Eastern Congregationalism after the War. 

Spiritual decline during the Revolutionary War — Progress 
made — Maine — New Hampshire — Vermont — Massachusetts 

— Rhode Island — Connecticut — Yale College — The Middle 
States — The South — Ecclesiastical controversy — The Unita- 
rian controversy — Condition of the churches 107 



Contents. vii 

CHAPTER X. 

Gains and Losses. 

Page 
Missionary enterprise — Missionary societies formed — Eelation 
of Congregationalism to Presbyterianism — Development of 
Presbyterianism in America — The "Plan of Union" — The 
Northwestern Territory — Indiana — Michigan — Illinois — The 
American Home Missionary Society —"The bequest of Con- 
gregationalism to Presbyterianism — Cooperation in mission- 
ary work— Christian liberality 122 

CHAPTER XL 

The Renaissance op Congregationalism. 

Organization bringing strength — Presbyterian action — Wis- 
consin—Iowa, and the " Iowa Band " — Minnesota — Kansas — 
Nebraska — Oregon — Dr. Whitman — Washington Territory 
— The New West — Dakota — Colorado — Utah — Here and 
there — The South — The American Missionary Association . 136 

CHAPTER XII. 
Current Denominational Activities. 

Our benevolent societies : Home Missionary Society — American 
Board — American Missionary Association — Congregational 
Union — Education Society — Congregational Sunday-School 
and Publishing Society — College Society — Congregational 
Association — New West Commission —Woman's Board- 
Woman's Home Missionary Association — Evangelists — Edu- 
cation — Journalism — Literature — The Ministry — Ecclesias- 
tical system 151 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Congregationalism in Other Lands. 

England — Henry Jacob — Westminster Assembly — Savoy As- 
sembly — Results of the Restoration — Persecution — Growth 
of English Congregationalism — Present status — Ireland and 
Scotland — Newfoundland — Canada — New Brunswick — Nova 
Scotia — Australia — Scandinavia — Conclusion 161 

APPENDIX. 

The National Council 178 

Congregational Creeds 182 

Congregational Literature 199 

Index ••...,.... i-v 



Outlines of Congregational History. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CONGREGATIONALISM OF THE EARLY 
CHURCHES. 

Congregationalism is a Christian democ- 
racy, protestant in spirit and evangelical in 
faith. Like other Protestants, we hold Christ 
to be the supreme and only Head of the 
Church, and admit the authority of no man- 
date but that of God's Word. Like other 
evangelical Christians, we hold the great 
spiritual truths which those terms imply. 

The doctrine of the Church is our distinc- 
tive tenet, the essence of which is that a church 
consists of a company of regenerate persons, 
publicly covenanting, worshiping, and laboring 
together, with an equality of rank and of 
rights, regulating their own membership, elect- 
ing their own pastor and deacons, managing 



2 Primitive Congregationalism. 

their own affairs, exchanging fellowship and 
counsel with other churches, but submitting 
to no dictation or control from any human 
source whatever, and recognizing no ecclesi- 
astical offices but those of the local church. 

As an organized system, Congregationalism 
began less than three hundred years ago ; but 
the ideas about which it then crystallized are 
as old as Christianity. Our history must begin, 
therefore, with the history of those ideas, the 
chief of which have been suggested. We shall 
find them in the teachings of our Lord, in 
the writings of his apostles, in the practices 
of the churches which they founded, in the 
common usages of the next two centuries, and 
in the consistent testimony of that great cloud 
of witnesses, who, in the ages of corruption 
which followed, never ceased to contend for 
the faith once delivered to the saints. 

No explicit directions for the organization 
and management of churches were given by 
our Lord. His plan evidently was to concen- 
trate attention upon the essential truths of 
Christianity, and depend upon them to shape 
its polity as occasion might require. That 



Primitive Congregationalism. 3 

some polity would ultimately be needed, to 
secure order and efficiency, was evident. 
Equally evident were its main features: it 
must be scriptural, simple, easily understood 
and readily operated, adapted to the needs of 
religious life, calculated to promote piety and 
soundness in the faith, and must prove itself, 
in actual use, to be practical and practicable. 

What our Saviour contributed toward such 
a system was merely a hint or two, which 
seemed at the time to be little more than rules 
of good manners among his disciples, but which 
proved to contain great fundamental and con- 
structive principles : that all disciples were 
equal in rank ; that none should assume 
authority over another ; that the member- 
ship of the church is the only human court of 
appeal, and that its purity is to be maintained 
by the exclusion of the unworthy. 1 

The apostles conformed to these principles, 
both in their personal intercourse with their 
fellow-believers and in the conduct of eccle- 
siastical affairs. They claimed special authority 
as teachers, by reason of their inspiration and 

!Matt. xxiii, 8-12; Matt, xviii, 15-18. 



4 Primitive Congregationalism. 

other exceptional gifts, but none whatever as 
rulers. It was the membership, in solemn 
recognition of its responsibility, and with 
devout prayer for, and reliance upon, divine 
guidance, that chose church officers, admitted 
and excluded members, administered charities, 
sent delegations to sister churches, gave and 
received advice. 1 

In the apostolic writings a great variety of 
spiritual gifts is mentioned, and many names 
are applied to the ministers of the gospel,- — 
pastors, teachers, elders, bishops, — but all 
denoting the various functions or attributes 
of the same office. Two classes only of church 
officers are recognized : the pastors and the 
deacons, no one of whom had any jurisdiction 
beyond the bounds of his own parish, or any 
dictatorial authority within it. 

The churches of the first two centuries con- 
tinued to practise this simple and scriptural 
method ; that is, th.Qj were essentially Congre- 
gational. Upon this point we can call a list 
of witnesses, than which a more illustrious 
can not be found in literature, much of the 

1 Actsi, 14-26; xv, 4-31; 1 Cor. v, 4, 5, 7, 13; vi, 2, 3; 2 Cor. ii, 6. 



Hierarchical Tendencies. 5 

testimony being peculiarly valuable because 
furnished by our opponents. Among more 
than one hundred eminent writers, of all creeds 
and of all epochs, from the first century to the 
nineteenth, whose published testimony to the 
Congregationalism of the early churches lies 
before me, I read such names as Ghrysostom, 
Jerome, Irenseus, Polycarp, and the two 
Clements among the Church Fathers; Mos- 
heim, Milner, and Neander among Church his- 
torians; Bengel, Clark, Scott, Henry, Alford, 
among commentators; Melancthon, Milton, 
Gibbon, Guizot, Coleridge, and scores of others 
among scholars. The conclusion of the pious 
and learned Dr. John Owen, who began the 
study of the subject for the purpose of exposing 
the fallacies of Congregationalism, but ended 
by heartily embracing the system, might be 
adopted by any scholar of our day. u In no 
approved writers, for two hundred years after 
Christ, is there any mention made of any other 
organical visibly professing church but that 
only which is parochial or Congregational." 

A gravitation toward hierarchical ideas began 
to manifest itself, however, before the funda- 



6 Hierarchical Tendencies. 

mental polity of the churches was changed. 
The multiplication of churches brought together 
in and around each great city a group of elders, 
who could not but be influential in their col- 
lective capacity, and who soon assumed func- 
tions not originally belonging to them ; while, 
through seniority in office, or some other virtue, 
accident, or convenience, one of the number 
became moderator of the presbytery and gen- 
eral adviser and supervisor of the churches. 
He was called bishop in a new sense, as one 
who had the oversight not of a single flock but 
of many. After a time, the prerogatives which 
had been at first voluntarily conceded, were 
claimed by virtue of office. Later still, office 
and prerogatives were prizes, sought by ambi- 
tious men, and often secured by bad means 
and used for bad ends. 

Councils which came into use in the second 
century, as purely representative bodies, mere 
conferences, convened for mutual consultation 
between brethren, gradually degenerated into 
priestly conclaves, dominated by the bishops 
and assuming to dominate the churches. For 
these new assumptions of the clergy, they 



Church and State. 7 

readily found justification in newly devised 
interpretations of Scripture, and ultimately not 
only claimed the exclusive right to declare the 
meaning of God's Word, but dared to supple- 
ment and even supplant it by their own decrees. 
More and more arrogant grew the bishops; 
more and more subservient grew the common 
clergy; while the laity were denied the right 
of private judgment in matters of faith or 
practice, and taught to commit all spiritual 
concerns to the priests. 

Meantime another source of corruption had 
been opened by the alliance of the Church 
with the State. Upon the conversion of Con- 
stantine, and the consequent nominal conver- 
sion of his servants by wholesale, and of his 
subjects by entire tribes and nations, there 
had been poured into the Church an unregen- 
erate mass, whose Christianity was but a bap- 
tized paganism. Having thus furnished the 
Church with a membership, the emperor pro- 
ceeded to supply it with a government. The 
clergy were organized into ranks corresponding 
to those in civil life, with the bishops of Alex- 
andria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome 



8 Church and State* 

at their head, From this point, the completion 
of the hierarchical system was easily effected, 
and the Bishop of Rome, by favor of his 
metropolitan position, the splendor and power 
of his court, his political intrigues, and the 
ingenious fiction of the primacy of Peter, was 
made supreme head of that great division of 
the Church which our subject brings into view. 

Thus had the Church departed from its 
original constitution. Instead of a brother- 
hood of believers, and a sisterhood of churches, 
was an arrogant hierarchy claiming to be The 
Church. Instead of a regenerate membership, 
was a characterless rabble. Instead of the 
equality of believers, was the subjection of 
the laity to the priesthood, and of all to the 
Pope. Instead of two orders of the clergy, 
were seven. Instead of the appeal to God's 
Word, was the dictum of Pope or council. 

The internal corruption which corresponded 
to this outward degeneracy, and which made 
the Romish Church, -for the next thousand 
years, the vilest and most blasphemous insti- 
tution on earth, are at once too disgusting and 
too familiar for repetition. The theme is per- 



The First Separatists. 9 

tinent to our present inquiry in two ways : 
first, as showing that purity of faith and 
a simple, scriptural polity stand or fall together ; 
and, secondly, as bringing to view the precise 
evils against which the faithful never ceased 
to bear witness. For be it remembered that, 
for thirteen hundred years before English 
Puritanism arose, the Puritan spirit had been 
in the Church. 

The first Separatists appeared in the third 
century. Their enemies called them Novatians, 
from the name of their leader. They called 
themselves Cathari, or The Pure, to signify their 
testimony against the impurity of the Church 
at large. They have been much maligned as 
schismatics; but their piety and zeal for the 
truth are undeniable. Their distinctive doc- 
trine was that the Church should contain only 
regenerate and consistent believers; and they 
exercised their Congregational right to object 
to the admission or retention of unworthy 
members, particularly those who, in times of 
persecution, had abjured the Christian faith. 
Their controversy with the Church upon this 
point led to their separation, and to the 



10 The First Separatists. 

formation of independent churches, which, in 
spite of bitter persecutions, flourished and 
multiplied for hundreds of years. 

In the fourth century, the Donatists, as 'their 
adversaries nicknamed them, gave a fresh im- 
pulse to the Separatist movement, holding that 
the Catholic Church was too corrupt to be re- 
garded as a church at all, or to receive the 
allegiance of a true believer. They claimed 
liberty of conscience and right of private 
judgment ; and, therefore, refused to be con- 
strained in matters of faith or duty by any 
human authority. They repudiated the church- 
and-state notions of their time. " What has 
the emperor to do with the Church ? " they 
asked. "What have Christians to do with 
kings ? or bishops with courts ? " They main- 
tained that bishops should not be ordained 
except upon evidence of their fitness for the 
office, and with the concurrence of neighboring 
bishops. So largely did their leading principles 
correspond with those afterward maintained by 
the English Puritans, that the enemies of the 
latter not inaptly called them Donatists. Op- 
posed and persecuted by both the "ecclesiastical 



Ancient Puritans. 11 

and the civil power, condemned by councils, 
bishops, and emperors, driven into deserts and 
mountain caves, they still bore their testimony 
for purity of faith and order. 

In the same century the Luciferians sepa- 
rated from the Church because it re-admitted 
apostates and heretics ; and the iErians were 
driven out because they demanded liberty of 
conscience concerning fasts, etc., appealed to 
Scripture as against human tradition or author- 
ity, and maintained the Congregational doctrine 
that there is no difference between bishops and 
elders. 

In the seventh century the Paulicians, called 
also Separatists and Puritans, appeared in 
Western Asia. Their founder, Constantine, by 
independent study of the New Testament, 
came to conclusions singularly Congregational : 
that the existing clerical orders were unscrip- 
tural; that there should be no difference of 
rank among ministers, except by common con- 
sent, and on account of worth or service ; 
that each Christian congregation constitutes 
a Church of Christ, and that the officers of a 
church should be chosen by the membership. He 



12 Mediceval Congregationalism. 

also protested against image-worship and other 
abuses. Driven to desperation by persecution 
and attempted extermination, the Paulicians 
armed and fortified themselves, and eventually 
took the offensive, and threatened the over- 
throw of both Church and empire by force. In 
the conflict that followed, their civil and mili- 
tary power was broken ; but their religious 
views survived every reverse and were the 
more widely diffused by the dispersion of their 
adherents. 

These Puritans of the earlier centuries were 
succeeded by others, and by others still, who 
from age to age dared to rebuke and resist the 
corruptions of the Church, and whom she as 
persistently persecuted. 

In the twelfth century we find the mountains 
of Southern Europe full of little congregations 
and communities, the spiritual, and in some 
cases no doubt the lineal, descendants of Nova- 
tian, Donatist, or Paulician refugees. Of the 
Waldenses, the best known and most heroic of 
these fugitives, a Pomish father has said that 
nothing could be more Christian than their 
faith or more blameless than their life. They 



Mediaeval Congregationalism. 13 

repudiated the authority of councils and 
prelates ; elected their own church officers ; 
regarded every believer as a priest, and every 
priest as a layman, and rejected every dogma, 
ceremony, and custom which was not sustained 
by the Word of God. Of course they were 
persecuted, as their predecessors had been, and 
with an increase of cruelty proportioned to the 
deeper corruption and more terrible power of 
the Papal Church. Yet they were neither 
destroyed nor silenced, but passed the word of 
protest from generation to generation, till at 
last it was taken up by the great reformers and 
made to resound throughout the world. 

We shall next hear it from the lips of 
the men who struck the key-note of English 
Puritanism. 



CHAPTER II. 

ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM IN CONFLICT 
WITH THE PAPACY. 

The Mother Country, as we fondly call her 
in her national capacity, was also the mother 
country of our denomination; although, 
ecclesiastically no less than politically, we are 
indebted rather to her severity than to her 
tenderness. The story, whose outlines we 
have traced across three continents, repeats 
itself, in all essential particulars, in the little 
insular world to which we now turn. 

Pagan England offered to the early Church 
a miserably destitute, though not altogether 
hopeless, field of missionary labor. Tribes of 
fierce barbarians, — Celt, Saxon, Dane, — native 
savage and foreign pirate, each with his own 
type of heathenism, hewed one another in 
pieces in the struggle for supremacy or for 
plunder. From the unexterminated remainder 
was evolved, under the law of the survival of 



Papal England. 15 

the strongest, a brave, self-reliant, and, withal, 
belligerent race — the forefathers of our fore- 
fathers. 

Papal England was England under another 
form of paganism. Whatever we may think 
of the traditions concerning apostolic or other 
efforts of a genuine Christianity in behalf of 
the early Britons, authentic history reveals, 
all too soon, the ascendency of the Romish 
Anti-Christ. By steps, which can not here be 
followed in detail, the new superstition was 
substituted for the old. Long before the 
Norman Conquest, the clergy had become an 
influential and arrogant body, whose power 
even the kings had been compelled to respect. 

The Conquest, sanctioned by the Pope and 
accomplished through his connivance, com- 
mitted the conquerors to the service of the 
Church, and made Romanism the religion of 
the realm. For .five hundred years, therefore, 
the English kings served Rome ; some of them 
from policy, and some of them by compulsion ; 
some with dignity, and some in abject depend- 
ence and servility; while their subjects were 
taught to yield allegiance first to the Church 



16 Papal England. 

and secondarily to the throne. Nowhere out 
of Italy did the papacy find larger license, gain 
wider influence, or make more infamous use 
of its power. Under the Pope, as vicar of God, 
the clergy claimed voice in all secular affairs 
and exclusive jurisdiction in matters of religion. 
By religion they meant unquestioning assent 
to the teachings of the Church — observance 
of its rites and obedience to its commands. 
The service of God consisted in processions, 
pilgrimages, penances, prayers for the dead, 
auricular confession, supplications to the saints, 
the worship of the Virgin, and, above all, in the 
payment of tithes to the Church. Worship 
was the chanting of a ritual in an unknown 
tongue. The priests who performed it were 
not required to possess faith, sincerity, or even 
decent morality, but only to be arrayed in vest- 
ments of prescribed pattern and color, to utter 
the prescribed words, and to .be adepts in the 
performance of pretended miracles and in the 
barter of grace for gold. Spiritual truth was 
nowhere taught; spiritual life was nowhere 
demanded. A knowledge of the Word of God 
was not even lawful. To read the Scriptures 



Papal England. 17 

was a sin ; to interpret them for one's self was 
perdition. The bread and wine of the sacra- 
ment were declared to be changed into the 
actual body and blood of Christ and were 
adored as God. The baptism of children, and 
the anointing and absolution of the dying, were 
rites necessary and effectual to salvation. 

Religion was a costly luxury. The higher 
orders of the clergy lived like princes; the 
lower ones multiplied like locusts. Every 
parish had its rapacious crowd of ecclesiastics, 
while the mendicant friars swarmed every- 
where, — a horde of priestly beggars, — squalid 
and lazy, and for the most part as vile in char- 
acter as in person. Many of the more impor- 
tant benefices were held by non-residents, who 
had no other interest in them than to secure 
their revenues. Scores, even hundreds, of 
church-livings were sometimes held by a single 
incumbent, whose only service in any of them 
was to bargain with the officiating priests for 
his proportion of the tithes. The revenues of 
the pope were many times greater than those 
of the king. Otto, the papal legate, who spent 
three or four years in England (1237-41), was 



18 John Wiclif. 

said to have extorted more money from the 
kingdom than all that he left in it. 

The private lives of the clergy were too vile 
for description. Gluttony and drunkenness 
were the commonest of vices. Vows of chastity 
were openly violated ; license for that purpose 
being sold for money. So notoriously dissolute 
were the priests, that upon their own confes- 
sion, in the reign of Henry VIII, they were 
unable to obtain board in respectable families. 
Such were the shepherds who made it their 
care not to feed the flock, but to devour it; 
and such was the system which produced them. 
It was to rebuke and resist this sham Chris- 
tianity that an uncorrupted remnant in the 
Church opposed to the papacy that form of 
dissent which afterward received the name 
of Puritanism. 

The first English Congregationalist of histor- 
ical distinction was John Wiclif — 1324-84. 
He has been aptly likened to John the Baptist. 
He was the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness — the herald of a new dispensation. Yet 
in his culture, his emancipation from the super- 
stitions of his age, and his refutp-tion of the 



John Wielif. 19 

errors in which he had been educated, he 
resembled Paul rather than John. A graduate 
of Oxford, accomplished in the scholastic learn- 
ing of his time, a skilful dialectician, a lecturer 
on divinity in his university, he was a godly 
man and a devout student of the Scriptures. 
His chief service to the Church was the res- 
toration of the Word of God to the people. 
He made the first complete translation of the 
Scriptures into English. He held them to be 
the heritage of every believer, the supreme 
rule of faith and practice, and an indispensa- 
ble requisite to a healthy spiritual life. He 
made it the business of his life to disseminate 
them and to unfold their meaning. By them 
he tested every doctrine* and every custom 
of the Church. To them he appealed from 
human tradition, from the decrees of councils, 
from the dicta of popes and of princes. Dis- 
covering in their light how false a system was 
the papacy, and seeing in the lives of the 
clergy its utter hypocrisy and corruption, he 
renounced its errors and denounced its vices, 
and became, as Milton says, " the first preacher 
of a general reformation to all Europe." With 



20 John Wiclif. 

voice and pen, for almost thirty years, he made 
war upon Rome. She replied, as usual, with 
invective, slander, anathemas, citations, con- 
demnations, and appeals to the civil power ; but 
with all her rage she could neither destroy the 
reformer nor quench the light which he had 
kindled. 

Wiclif's Congregationalism was not a reac- 
tion from the hierarchical system which he was 
opposing, but a part of that primitive truth 
which he found in the word of God. If, as an 
English magazine writer has said, he was " the 
modern discoverer of the doctrines of Congre- 
gational dissent," the discovery was made at 
the original sources of doctrine. The resort 
to the Scripture wa*s itself eminently Congre- 
gational, and led the candid student where he 
could hardly fail to discover the constitution 
of the primitive Church. He denied the pri- 
macy of the pope and protested, not only 
against the temporal power of the bishops, but 
against the exercise of spiritual authority over 
the Church. He maintained the equality of 
the clergy, and held that only worthy priests 
should be recognized as such; that they did not 



The "Poor-Priests." 21 

need episcopal ordination ; that any Christian 
whom God had qualified for priestly duties 
might perform them, and that priests, bishops, 
and even the pope himself, might be disciplined 
by the Church. 

Itinerant preachers, versed in Wiclif's 
opinions, and imbued with his spirit, carried 
the truth far and wide. They were called 
"poor-priests," and were designed by the re- 
former to constitute a sort of religious order, 
in contrast to the mendicant friars. "If beg- 
ging friars," said he, " stroll over the country, 
preaching the legends of saints and the history 
of the Trojan war, we must do for God's glory 
what they do to fill their wallets, and form a 
vast itinerant evangelization, to convert souls 
to Jesus Christ." Clad in long russet gowns, 
often barefoot, always poor, these primitive 
evangelists went, staff in hand, up and down 
the land. " Go and preach," said Wiclif ; 
" it is the sublimest work. But imitate not 
the priests whom we see after the sermon sit- 
ting in the ale-house, or at the gaming-table, or 
wasting their time in hunting. After your ser- 
mon is ended, do you visit the sick, the aged, 



22 The Lollards. 

the poor, the blind, and the lame, and snccor 
them according to your ability." In this spirit 
they went forth, denouncing sin, exposing the 
errors and combating the superstitions of the 
papacy, and instructing the people in the Word 
of God. They preached in parks and gardens, 
in market-places and graveyards, in streets and 
highways, and from house to house. The peo- 
ple everywhere nocked to hear them, and mul- 
titudes embraced the truth with eagerness. 

The followers of Wiclif, or, rather, his 
fellow-believers, were called Lollards, an un- 
explained term of contempt for which they 
were indebted to their enemies. The major- 
ity of them belonged, of course, to the common 
people ; but to these were added a goodly num- 
ber of priests, scholars, knights, and nobles. 
Among those from the literary class are 
mentioned the poets Chaucer and William 
Longland, author of Piers Plowman. Of the 
nobility, the most distinguished was Sir John 
Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, a bold defender of 
the faith and a martyr to its cause. Queen 
Anne, the first wife of Richard II, is said to 
have been a devout believer. So rapidly did 



The Lollards. 23 

the truth spread, that before the close of the 
fourteenth century a papal writer complained 
that every second man in England was a 
Lollard. 

Romish persecution, which had so fiercely 
assailed Wiclif, fell with even greater vio- 
lence upon his successors in the faith. At 
first, indeed, the poor-priests were too obscure 
to attract the attention of the clergy. But 
the blows which they dealt the papacy soon 
made themselves so severely felt as to awaken 
the bitterest resentment and antagonism. 
Soon, not against the poor-priests alone, but 
against all Lollards whatever, a persecution 
was begun, which continued with varying in- 
tensity till the time of the Reformation. Some- 
times it was confined to ecclesiastical opposi- 
tion — censures, excommunication, the burning 
of heretical books, and the fulmination of 
papal curses. Oftener, however, it was able 
to secure the aid of all the machinery of 
State. In the House of Commons, the Lol- 
lards at times became influential, presented 
protests and petitions, and even inaugurated 
legislation in favor of religious reform ; but 



24 Lollardism. 

in the Upper House the prelates and their 
patrons commonly held control. As to the 
kings, though they had their own standing 
quarrel with, the popes concerning precedence 
in authority, they were quick to rebuke any 
assertion of the spiritual rights of their 
subjects. For more than a century before the 
Reformation, the combined power of Church 
and State was almost constantly employed to 
crush the Lollards. They were declared 
public enemies ; they were forbidden to preach, 
to teach, to meet for worship, to read the Word 
of God. They were imprisoned; they were 
subjected to cruel tortures ; they were exposed 
in the public stocks ; they were compelled 
to perform most humiliating penance ; their 
property was confiscated ; some of them were 
starved or strangled in prison, and many were 
burned at the stake. 

The offences charged against them were, 
indeed, sometimes political. They constituted 
the party of progress and of liberty ; and it was 
natural that political agitators should discover 
an affinity for them. Revolts and insurrections 
were therefore frequently charged to them, and 



Lollardism. 25 

were made the pretext for wholesale persecu- 
tion. But it was not for such offences that the 
Church pursued them. The crimes of which 
they were accused were such as these : reading 
and expounding the Word of God; meeting 
together for prayer and Christian fellowship; 
denying the efficacy of absolution, confirmation, 
and extreme unction ; affirming that the bread 
and wine remained unchanged at the commun- 
ion ; holding that a church is a congregation 
of true believers, that worship is as acceptable 
in the open air as within the walls of a church, 
that there is no purgatory, that praying or 
candle-burning to saints is idolatry, that it is 
lawful for priests to marry, that the gospel 
is a sufficient guide to faith, and so forth. But 
it was not in the power of Rome to destroy the 
truth. In spite of all her rage, the gospel 
made more conquests than she could boast. If, 
as Mr. Froude asserts, Lollardy was destroyed, 
it was the extinction of a name, and not of the 
faith for which it stood. A leaven had begun 
to work in the minds of the English people, 
which was destined to revolutionize both 
Church and State. The doctrines which 



26 Lollardism. 

Wiclif preached, and to which the Lollard 
martyrs bore witness, gained a stronger and 
stronger hold upon the nation, and, in the 
epoch next to follow, furnished king and people 
with the chief constructive ideas of the English 
Reformation. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM IN CONFLICT 
WITH THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 

The Reformation in England was not an 
accident, resulting from the domestic infelici- 
ties of Henry VIII. It was not the contagion 
of German Protestantism. It was not a pre- 
meditated revolt against the papacy. It was 
a part of that great providential movement, 
whose causes operated simultaneously in Great 
Britain and on the Continent, in souls prepared 
of God to receive the truth. Its cardinal ideas 
were the supremacy of Christ, the authority 
of the Scriptures, the individual responsibility 
of believers. To call those ideas Congrega- 
tional is not to claim a monopoly of them for 
one denomination, but only to recognize the 
spiritual kinship of that denomination with the 
men who were inspired by them. They were 
not new ideas to English Christians. They 
had been made familiar throughout the realm 



28 Henry VIII. 

by the preaching of Wiclif and the Lollards, 
and their marvelous vitality appeared in that, 
after a hundred and fifty years of persecution, 
they not only were more deeply rooted than 
ever in the minds of earnest believers, but were 
at last substantially adopted by the very party 
which had denounced them as heresies. 

Henry VIII, as a papist, was as bitter an 
enemy of Lollardism as any of his predeces- 
sors had been. He not only allowed the 
clergy to persecute without restraint all who 
were so much as suspected of dissenting from 
the doctrines of the Church, but personally 
aided and directed the work, issuing edicts 
and proclamations against the popular heresy, 
procuring acts of Parliament for its suppres- 
sion, and placing the royal constabulary at 
the service of the inquisitors. The fires of 
Smithfield were often lighted to consume 
Lollard martyrs. William Carder, William 
Sweating, Robert Harrison, John and Agnes 
Grebyll, John Stillman, Richard Hunne, 
Thomas Man, Tylsworth, Cosin, Style, John 
Browne, and Christopher Shoemaker, were 
among those who perished at the stake during 



Henry VIIL 29 

the period of Henry's subserviency to Rome; 
while those who endured other cruelties for the 
truth's sake were numberless. Fox, speaking 
of those who suffered under the edict of 1529 
alone, says: "But what stand I here numbering 
the sand?" And when, after thus serving the 
papacy for twenty years, the king saw fit to 
renounce his allegiance to the pope, his attitude 
toward the so-called heretics remained for 
a time unchanged. He merely superseded the 
pope as head of the Church, so far as his own 
realm was concerned. He contemplated no 
changes of doctrine, no enfranchisement of 
religious opinion. 

Henry VIII, as Pope, could not, however, 
follow the precepts of Henry VIII as papist. 
He was compelled to resort to principles which 
he had formerly treated as heretical. In spite 
of himself, he became a sort of Lollard. The 
Lollards had anticipated him in denying the 
headship of the pope ; though they would 
hardly have concurred in substituting that 
of the king. They had maintained that the 
king ought to interfere for the correction of 
ecclesiastical abuses ; he now undertook that 



30 Henry^s Lollardism. 

duty. They had denounced the avarice of the 
Jesuits, their exorbitant ■ fees, their resort to 
secular pursuits, the holding of a plurality of 
livings, etc., and had been persecuted as 
enemies of the Church. Yet, in 1529, the very 
same year in which Henry issued his bitter 
edict against the Lollards, he not only put in 
execution certain disused statutes against 
ecclesiastical aggression, but " set forward " 
in Parliament three bills, each embodying 
distinctively Lollard ideas : two of them 
regulating and reducing the fees of the clergy, 
and the other condemning the three clerical 
abuses — secularization, plurality, and non- 
residence. The Lollards had appealed from 
the pope to the Word of God, and it was 
counted an unpardonable sin. Yet a similar 
appeal was Henry's first step toward inde- 
pendence. The tentative suggestion of Cran- 
mer, that the validity of the king's marriage 
should be determined by the law of God, 
which law the pope could not annul, was the 
boldest Lollardy, and had the principle in- 
volved in it been arrived at in the abstract, 
would have sent its author to the stake. As 



Circulation of the Scriptures. 31 

it was, it made him an archbishop, and changed 
the destiny of the English Church. Henry 
adopted it, submitted its application to the 
scholarship of Christendom, received an answer 
entirely to his mind, and, upon strictly 
scriptural ground, divorced the queen and 
defied the pope. 

The dissemination and use of the English 
Scriptures had been one of the crimes of the 
Lollards. Wiclif's Bible had been in cir- 
culation for a century and a half. Tyndale 
and his fellow-exiles on the Continent were 
secretly supplying their English brethren with 
fresh translations. To read, to hear, or to 
have them was a felony. In the persecution 
waged by the Bishop of London in 1520-21, 
and in which the king enjoined " all mayors, 
sheriffs, bailiffs, and constables and all other 
officers," to cooperate, one of the gravest 
charges against the victims was reading or 
hearing Scripture passages and expositions. 
But in 1535, Coverdale's translation, the first 
printed English Bible, was openly published, 
dedicated to the king and queen, and circu- 
lated by royal command. So zealous was 



32 Progress and Persecution. 

Henry now in promoting what lie had for- 
merly so strenuously opposed, that when the 
bishops to whom he had submitted the book 
ungraciously admitted that it maintained no 
heresies, the king exclaimed: "Then in God's 
name, let it go abroad among the people ! " 
And abroad it went. Two years later, Mat- 
thew's Bible, so called, the work of the Puritan 
martyrs, William Tyndale and John Rogers, 
was authorized by royal proclamation, and 
ordered to be placed in every church in the 
realm, where the people might "most conven- 
iently resort to the same and read it." The 
clergy were strictly charged to " discourage no 
man, privily or apertly, from the reading or 
hearing of the same Bible"; but to "provoke, 
stir, and exhort every person to read the same, 
as that which is the very lively Word of God ; 
that every Christian man is bound to embrace, 
believe, and follow, if he look to be saved." 

It is no part of our present task to follow the 
familiar history of Bible translation; but it is 
pertinent to our subject to observe the triumph 
of those principles for which the early Congre- 
gationalists contended so earnestly and suffered 



Progress and Persecution, 33 

so cruelly. Their ideas concerning the priest- 
hood, the sacraments, the innumerable feast- 
days, the superstitious use of relics, images, 
pilgrimages, and other Romish abuses, ulti- 
mately gained currency in the Church, and 
were published in repeated proclamations from 
the very monarch who had denounced them 
as "damnable heresies." 

But all this was no concession of religious 
liberty. As an English pope, Henry claimed 
as absolute control over the consciences of his 
subjects, and over the institutions of religion, 
as ever his Romish rival had done. He abro- 
gated certain papal laws, but substituted for 
them his own. He reaffirmed the cardinal 
doctrines of the papacy and revived its cruel- 
ties. He published an order of service, to 
which all were required to conform. He put 
the Tyndale and Coverdale Bibles, which he 
had once authorized, under interdict, together 
with all writings by their translators or other 
men of kindred spirit. To refuse conformity 
in the slightest particular, or even to speak 
a word against the king's edicts, was a crime. 
Hundreds committed it, and hundreds of arrests 



34 Non-conformity under Edward VI. 

followed, till the prisons were filled to over- 
flowing. But the ' persecution, so fiercely 
begun, was terminated by the king's death. 

The accession of Edward VI gave a new 
impulse to the Reformation. Again the ideas 
of the early dissenters showed their vitality, 
and their ascendency in some of the best minds 
in England. Of the regents and counselors 
whom Henry had selected to administer the 
government during Edward's minority, the 
greater number were sincerely resolved upon 
reform. Persecution was stopped; prisoners 
accused of heresy were released; those who 
had left the kingdom for conscience' sake 
were invited to return; persecuting statutes 
were repealed; every restriction upon private 
opinion was removed. Yet those, who were 
so ready to emancipate Christian thought and 
the Christian conscience, could not trust them 
when emancipated to determine the outward 
forms of religion, but undertook to regulate 
all such matters by law. The ritual was im- 
proved, but was still essentially Romish ; and 
its strict observance was insisted upon, under 
penalties varying from trifling fines to the total 



Bloody Mary. 35 

forfeiture of goods and imprisonment for life. 
The issue now presented to the champions of 
religious liberty was that of conformity or non- 
conformity to this ritual. 

Another issue, intrinsically trifling, but in- 
volving some significant results, was that con- 
cerning clerical vestments. Should the robes 
worn by the Romish priests be retained in use 
in the English Church ? The lingering spirit 
of papacy clung to them. They were also 
defended on the grounds of economy and 
decency. But the rising spirit of Puritanism 
rejected them as relics of popery. The -ridicu- 
lous discussion waxed hot. The Catholic party 
carried the day ; and the vestments were 
solemnly decreed and their use was made com- 
pulsory. This controversy, together with that 
concerning the order of worship, served to 
define the Puritan element more clearly ; and 
the attempt to enforce conformity hastened the 
inevitable day of separation. 

The reign of Bloody Mary put an end alike 
to trivial disputes and to substantial reform. 
The papacy was restored to power. Legisla- 
tion was again invoked in behalf of religious 



36 Elizabeth. 

tyranny. Protestants were persecuted, impris- 
oned, burned at the stake. The fires of Smith- 
field blazed almost without cessation. Now fell 
John Rogers, Bishop Hooper, John Bradford, 
Ridley, Latimer, and hosts of less renowned 
martyrs. The number of those who perished 
at the stake is estimated at from two hundred 
to eight hundred. Still, Dissenters, and among 
them Congregational Dissenters, stood fast in 
the faith. They gathered in secret for wor- 
ship; they administered the sacraments; they 
bestowed charities ; they received and excluded 
members; they exercised the chief functions, 
whether or not they had the formal organiza- 
tion, of Congregational churches. Isolated, 
hunted, spied upon, compelled to meet by 
stealth, they proved the capacity of a polity 
which secures the autonomy of the local con- 
gregation. Seeking for scriptural instruction 
and example, they found in the apostolic 
churches precisely what they needed. 

Elizabeth restored Protestantism, but lent 
little aid to reform. Rejecting the policy of 
Mary as too vindictive, and that of Edward as 
too compliant, she went back for her example 



Elizabeth, 37 

to the reign of Henry VIII. Like him, she 
assumed the prerogatives of pope in her own 
realm. She prescribed the forms of worship, 
and directed all ecclesiastical affairs. She 
tolerated no non-conformity, and no absence 
from the established churches. She secured 
acts of Parliament in support of her authority 
in religious affairs ; but promptly rebuked any 
legislation, or even petition, which savored of 
interference. But the more tyrannical the 
queen and the clergy became, the more cour- 
ageous and steadfast grew the Puritans, and the 
more evident became the necessity for separa- 
tion from the Established Church. Many scat- 
tered congregations were already practically 
separate and independent. The time was at 
hand, hastened by every act of oppression, 
when avowed and absolute separation was to 
introduce a new era in Congregational history. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SEPARATION FROM THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 

Three religious parties were to be found 
in the English Church at the close of the six- 
teenth century : the Papists, secretly loyal to 
Rome, but accepting the established order as 
a necessary evil, and making the best of it to 
their own advantage ; the friends of the Estab- 
lishment, with the queen at their head, and all 
but the name of Romanism in their system ; 
and the Puritans, the champions of genuine 
Protestantism and reform. The Puritans were 
subdivided into two classes : the Conformists, 
who, while they were shocked by the corrup- 
tions of the Church, and protested against its 
prelatical and ritualistic errors, yet yielded 
obedience to what they regarded as rightful 
authority ; and the Non-conformists, who re- 
garded no authority as competent to impose 
unscriptural rites upon the Church. The Non- 
conformists were again subdivided into two 
classes : the one seeking to purify, and if 



Separation from the English Church, 39 

possible Puritanize, the Mother Church, but 
clinging to her in spite of her faults, and 
never leaving her until driven out by violence ; 
the other abandoning her as unchristian and 
incapable of reformation, and forming separate 
churches of their own. It is these last, known 
to us as Separatists, who chiefly interest us as 
students of Congregational history. 

Separation was an act of Christian courage, 
whose audacity we can hardly appreciate. It 
was not only a repudiation of ecclesiastical 
authority, but rebellion against the civil power 
by which that authority was sustained. The 
Reformation left Church and State as insep- 
arably connected as before. Under the Papacy, 
the State was dependent upon the Church ; 
under the Reformation, the Church was depend- 
ent upon the State. The work of Luther and 
his co-laborers had been carried on under the 
protection of powerful princes, and its success 
served to perpetuate the alliance of rulers and 
reformers, and to establish state Churches. In 
England, the work of reconstructing the Church 
proceeded from the throne, and it was at the 
throne that the whole system centred. The 



40 Non-conformity under Elizabeth. 

theory of the English Church was that the 
religion of the sovereign was the religion of 
every loyal subject ; that the king was to direct 
public teaching and public worship. An un- 
authorized opinion was heresy ; an unauthorized 
rite was rebellion. Elizabeth improved upon 
her father's example as a religious despot. 
The Act of Supremacy, passed by her first 
Parliament, gave her absolute jurisdiction in all 
matters of religion, and the right to investigate 
and reform heresies at her discretion. Under 
this act, she reorganized the system of eccle- 
siastical courts inherited from the papacy, and 
added to them that most terrible agent of per- 
secution — the High Commission. The Act of 
Uniformity, by the same Parliament, required 
every subject regularly to attend the author- 
ized churches ; ordered the use of the revised 
Book of Common Prayer, and the retention of 
the Romish vestments and furniture in the 
churches; authorized the queen to "ordain 
and publish further rites and ceremonies " at 
her pleasure, and made any act or word con- 
trary to these commands a crime. 

The Act to Retain the Queen's Subjects in 



Non-conformity under Elizabeth. 41 

Obedience came more than twenty years later, 
but deserves to be mentioned in this connec- 
tion, as it was aimed especially at the Sepa- 
ratists. It punished Non-conformity, or absence 
from the Established Churches, with fine and 
imprisonment and, when persisted in, with ban- 
ishment and forfeiture of goods, and made it 
a felony to utter or publish anything "to the 
defamation of the queen, or to the stirring or 
moving of any rebellion." Of course, utter- 
ances derogatory to the Church or its rites 
were construed as coming within the meaning 
of the last clause. It was the execution of 
this act that drove so many Separatists, includ- 
ing the Pilgrim Fathers, out of England. 

The church to which Elizabeth thus sought 
to bind her subjects by force, could make no 
higher appeal to men of genuine faith. Its 
appointments and ceremonies were papistical. 
Its clergy constituted as offensive a hierarchy 
as Eome herself could boast. Among them 
were drunkards, gamblers, Sabbath-breakers, 
adulterers, and even branded felons. Yet to 
speak a word against them was constructive 
felony. To petition for reform exposed the 



42 Puritan Exiles in Germany, 

petitioners to arrest and imprisonment. Even 
the Honse of Commons, in which the Puritan 
element was strong, was forbidden by the 
queen to legislate upon religious matters ex- 
cept by her direction. Such was the system 
from which the Separatists withdrew, and 
such were the difficulties under which their 
withdrawal was accomplished. 

Separation by voluntary exile had begun 
during the Lollard persecutions. Among those 
who fled from the wrath of Bloody Mary was 
a company of believers who took up their resi- 
dence in Frankfort, where, in 1554, they organ- 
ized a church upon an essentially Congregational 
plan. They used the English Prayer-book, with 
certain omissions, yet they were not Episcopa- 
lians. They appointed " Seniors" to administer 
the government of the Church under direction 
of the membership ; yet they were not Presby- 
terians. In their ideas of the Church and the 
ministry, and in their management of all impor- 
tant affairs, they were eminently democratic. 
Dissensions were introduced among them by 
ritualistic intermeddlers from England, and 
many of the brethren, including John Knox, 



Brownism. 43 

were driven out. But the Church recovered 
its original position, and adopted a New Disci- 
pline, elaborately Congregational. 

Other churches are believed to have been 
formed upon the same plan by other Puritan 
exiles in Germany ; but they have left no 
records sufficient to furnish positive informa- 
tion. The influences around them were not 
favorable to such ideas or methods. The Re- 
formed Churches were already committed to a 
very different polity. Francis Lambert had, 
indeed, as early as 1526, proposed a Congrega- 
tional system for the Hessian Churches, and a 
synod, called by his patron, Philip the Land- 
grave, to consider the plan, had heartily endorsed 
it. But upon the advice of Luther, who seems 
to have thought it right in theory, but, for the 
time being, impracticable, it was postponed till 
a more convenient season, and never revived. 

Brownism is the next phase of English Sepa- 
ratism which claims our attention. Robert 
Browne was born of an honorable Rutlandshire 
family, about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. He studied at Cambridge, where he dis- 
tinguished himself by his eloquence, and was 



44 Brownism. 

silenced for his bold Puritanism. At the age 
of thirty we find him at Norwich, associated 
with his friend, Robert Harrison, preaching the 
most advanced doctrines of church reform to a 
congregation of Separatists. Renouncing the 
hierarchical system, with all that it contained 
and involved, and taking the New Testament 
only as his guide, he rediscovered the original 
church polity of the apostles, and organized in 
1580 or 1581 what Dr. Dexter believes to have 
been " the first church in modern days . . . 
which was intelligently and, as one might say, 
philosophically, Congregational in its platform 
and processes." Persecuted by the Bishop of 
Norwich, he fled, with most or all of his church, to 
Middleburg, Zealand, where, with Harrison, he 
published his " Reformation without Tarrying 
for Any," and other effective treatises against 
the English Church. So mischievous did the 
prelates think his books that a royal proclama- 
tion was issued against them, and two faithful 
Separatists, Thacker and Copping, were hanged 
for circulating them. 

The last days of Robert Browne were not 
illustrious. He left Middleburg on account of 



Greenwood, Barrowe, Penry. 45 

troubles in his church ; went to Scotland, where 
he was taken in hand by the Presbytery ; 
escaped to England, where he endured fresh 
persecutions ; fell into divers temptations, and 
was finally reconciled to Mother Church. But 
nothing can annul the record of his earlier 
days, his brilliant talents, his burning zeal, his 
courage, his sufferings for the truth's sake. 
He was the pioneer in that movement which he 
himself so aptly termed " Reformation without 
Tarrying for Any," and which differed so widely 
from the efforts of those good Puritans of his 
time, who were ready to become reformers if 
they could obtain due authority to do so. 

The London Separatists bore an important 
part in the events under consideration. Among 
them were some of the most eminent defenders 
of the faith. John Greenwood, a Cambridge 
graduate and a clergyman of the English 
Church, renounced his ordination, because con- 
vinced that it was unscriptural, and became a 
Separatist. As such he was arrested and 
thrown into the Clink Prison in London, whence 
by his pen he wielded an influence which he 
could hardly have attained in a state of liberty. 



46 The London Separatists. 

Henry Barrowe, a converted lawyer, Green- 
wood's friend and fellow-Separatist, became his 
fellow-prisoner in the Clink, and like him, a 
prolific author of anti-prelatical literature. His 
Discovery of the False Church was the most 
telling attack upon the hierarchy, and the ablest 
exposition of Congregational principles which 
had yet been produced. 

John Penry was a Welshman by birth, a 
Papist by inheritance, a Puritan by education, 
and a Separatist by conviction. The passion 
of his life was his desire for the evangelization 
of Wales. While yet but a Puritan, he made 
himself obnoxious to the English clergy by the 
zeal with which he urged the matter upon their 
attention. As a Separatist, he became promi- 
nently connected with the publication of pro- 
scribed literature, and was compelled to flee to 
Scotland. Returning to London three years 
later, he was thrown into prison, a fate which 
then awaited every prominent Separatist in 
that city. 

Francis Johnson was a reforming Puritan, 
though a clergyman of the English Church. 
After various difficulties, on account of his 



The London Separatists. 47 

advanced views, he went to Middleburg, where 
he preached to a congregation of English resi- 
dents, not Separatists. Being deputed to seize 
and destroy an edition of one of Barrowe's 
works, then going through the press, he was 
led to read it, and finally to embrace its views, 
and to identify himself with its author and his 
fellow-Separatists in London. 

In 1592, the London Separatists organized 
as a church, choosing Johnson as their pastor 
and Greenwood as their teacher. The organi- 
zation was thoroughly Congregational in spirit, 
though it included a ruling eldership, which 
afterward proved a source of weakness and 
division. 

The Martin Marprelate Tracts belong to this 
period, and did their part in the controversy 
between prelacy and reform. They were a 
series of keen, aggravating but anonymous 
satires upon the Church and the clergy. Their 
victims were stung to madness by them, and 
searched every corner of England for the 
irreverent Martin: but his identity remains 
undiscovered to this day. Dr. Dexter presents 
some strong reasons for believing that Penry 



48 James I, 

published them, and for suspecting that 
Barrowe wrote them. 1 

Three Congregational martyrs were furnished 
by the London Separatists. Barrowe and 
Greenwood, condemned under the Act of Uni- 
formity, were hanged April 6, 1593. Penry 
suffered the- same fate a few weeks later. They 
were the last of the Separatist martyrs. The 
Act for Retaining the Queen's Subjects in 
Obedience, which was pending in Parliament 
at the time of these executions, now furnished 
a new method of extinguishing heresy. Its 
first application was to Johnson and his church 
in London. Driven into exile, they fled to 
Amsterdam, where they reorganized, retaining 
Johnson as their pastor, and choosing Henry 
Ainsworth as teacher, in place of the martyred 
Greenwood. The subsequent history of this 
church, rent by unhappy disputes about the 
eldership, we can not now follow. 

James I brought to his new kingdom no 
religious tolerance. The Separatists hoped 
much from him, and offered their humble 
petitions for relief; but he rudely repulsed 

1 Congregationalism as Seen in its Literature. 



James L 49 

them, and announced his intention to hang 
them or "harry them out of the kingdom." 
Many of them went into voluntary or invol- 
untary exile. Thomas White and his church, 
from the west of England, and John Smyth 
and his church, from Gainsboro' in the north, 
removed to Amsterdam. 

In the village of Scrooby, twelve miles from 
Gainsboro', another Separatist church was wont 
to gather for worship at the house of one 
William Brewster. An account of that church, 
its fortunes, its achievements, and its successors, 
will chiefly occupy the chapters which follow. 

The Congregationalism of the Separatists 
can not well be summarized in a paragraph. 
Negatively it rejected the doctrine that the 
nation was the Church ; denied the right of the 
sovereign to dictate in matters of religion ; 
declared the hierarchical system unscriptural, 
prescribed modes of worship heathenish, and 
denounced the corruption of the Church in 
unsparing terms. Positively, it called for a 
restoration of the primitive order ; made the 
Scriptures the basis of its organization and 
proceedings ; insisted upon a regenerate and 



50 Polity of the Separatists. 

consistent membership, the parity of the clergy, 
and the autonomy of the local church. Indi- 
vidual eccentricities, like the fraternal imperti- 
nence of the Brownists and the self-baptism 
of John Smyth, were incident to the system, 
but no part of it. The eldership, a variable 
though constant factor, was an institution 
within the local church, created by, and subor- 
dinate to, the membership ; and while some- 
times, in a Presbyterian environment, it grew 
mischievous, it served a temporary purpose 
until eliminated by the free spirit of New 
England Congregationalism. 



CHAPTER V. 
FROM SCROOBY TO PLYMOUTH ROCK. 

The romance of Congregational history- 
began in a prosaic little North of England 
village, about the year 1607. The regions 
round about, embracing portions of the shires 
of York, Lincoln, and Nottingham, had experi- 
enced under the preaching of godly men a sort 
of Puritan revival; and a goodly number of 
the converts had advanced from Puritanism 
to Separatism. For convenience of assembly, 
and to avoid needless publicity, they organized 
two churches, one at Gainsboro' in Lincolnshire, 
and one at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, twelve 
miles apart. 

Scrooby, " the Nazareth of Congregational- 
ism," though an insignificant hamlet, was a 
post-station on the great thoroughfare from 
London to Scotland. The resident postmaster 
to his majesty was William Brewster, a man 
of university education, who had been in the 
confidential service of the unfortunate William 



52 The Scrooby Church 

Davidson, one of Elizabeth's secretaries of 
state, and had seen something of courts and of 
foreign travel. He was a man of rare wisdom 
in practical affairs, an accomplished scholar, a 
ready speaker, a devout and active Christian, 
and enjoyed the friendship of many distin- 
guished men of his time. His residence was a 
great manor-house belonging to the Archbishop 
of York, for whom Brewster was acting as 
agent. 

It was in this house that the meetings, 
and probably the organization, of the Scrooby 
Church took place. " With great love he en- 
tertained them," says Bradford, " making pro- 
visions for them to his great charge, and con- 
tinued so to do whilst they could stay in Eng- 
land." It was a strange providence that made 
this archiepiscopal palace, which had been for 
six hundred years the property and the occa- 
sional residence of Romish and Anglican prel- 
ates, and within whose walls kings and queens 
had been entertained, the meeting-house of a 
church whose very existence was a defiance of 
both prelate and king. 

Richard Clyfton was chosen pastor, a choice 



The Scrooby Church. 53 

which evinced the wisdom of the church and 
proved most fortunate for its subsequent wel- 
fare. He was " a grave and reverend 
preacher," of long experience in the ministry, 
and one who, " by his pains and diligence, had 
done much good, and under God had been a 
means of conversion to many." 2 

John Robinson, Master of Arts, Fellow of 
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and an 
ordained deacon of the English Church, was 
chosen teacher. He was now probably not far 
from twenty-nine years of age, "but a man 
of a learned, polished, and modest spirit, pious 
and studious of the truth, largely accomplished, 
with suitable gifts and qualifications." 1 

Brewster himself, who upon occasion could 
also preach to edification, was made elder; 
thus completing, as Dr. Bacon says, " the three- 
fold eldership, — pastor, teacher, and ruler, — 
the presbytery within the Church, not outside 
of it and over it." 

The rank and file of the membership con- 
sisted of men and women admirably fitted for 
the career which awaited them ; honest country- 

1 Bradford. 



54 Migration from Serooby. 

folk, intelligent, industrious, independent, and 
thoroughly understanding the import of that 
covenant in which they promised one another 
"to walk in His ways, made known or to be 
made known unto them, according to their best 
endeavors, whatever it should cost them, the 
Lord assisting them." The cost was soon 
evident. Elizabeth's Act to Retain her Sub- 
jects in Obedience had been re-affirmed at the 
accession of James, and was rigidly enforced. 
The Separatists in the north country felt its 
cruel power. " Some were taken and clapped 
up in prison ; others had their homes beset and 
watched night and day — and the most were 
fain to flee and leave their homes and habita- 
tions and the means of their livelihood." But 
this was not eas} r of accomplishment. While 
the penalty for their non-conformity was ban- 
ishment, they were not permitted to go until 
they were formally sentenced. They decided, 
however, to waive formalities, and go without 
sentence or permission. 

The first migration of the Serooby Pilgrims 
was arranged for under the direction of Brew- 
ster and others in the autumn of 1607. Their 



From Scrooby to Amsterdam* 55 

homes were broken up ; all available means 
were collected; the distress of expatriation 
was endured, and the sad exiles found their 
way as best they could to Boston, fifty miles 
away, where they had engaged transportation 
to Holland. But when they were already on 
board the ship, and counted their escape as 
good as accomplished, the captain basely be- 
trayed them to their enemies, and they were 
arrested and cast into prison. Most of them 
were delivered within a month, and all of them 
within six months; for in the spring of 1608 
they contracted for passage with a Dutch 
captain, sailing from Hull. The place of 
embarkation was an uninhabited spot on the 
Humber River. Accidents of wind and tide 
delayed them most vexatiously, however; and 
just as the first boat-load had been taken on 
board, the king's posse appeared upon the scene. 
The frightened Dutchman set sail with those 
on board, leaving the rest to the mercy of 
their enemies. No more serious consequences 
followed, however, than temporary annoyance 
and insult, the separation of friends, and the 
privations incident to their helpless condition. 



56 From Scrooby to Amsterdam. 

The ship reached Holland after a terribly 
stormy passage ; and those who had escaped 
secured the transportation of the rest. " In 
the end they all got over, some at one time and 
some at another, and met together again with 
no small rejoicing." 

At Amsterdam, where the Scrooby exiles first 
attempted to find a home, they found many 
fellow-Separatists, including John Smyth and 
his church from Gainsboro', and Francis John- 
son and his church from London. But the air 
was full of contention. Smyth was urging his 
wild views about extemporaneous Scripture 
translation, improvised Psalmody, etc., and 
Johnson and Ainsworth were disputing over 
their respective views of the eldership. The 
Scrooby brethren wisely decided to avoid all 
connection with these troubles by seeking a 
home elsewhere. They accordingly addressed 
a memorial to " The Honorable the Burgomas- 
ters and Court of the City of Leyden," stating 
who and how many they were, and that they 
desired permission to live in Leyden, " and to 
have the freedom thereof in carrying on their 
trades, without being a burden in the least to 



From Amsterdam to Leyden. 57 

any." The authorities replied that the " com- 
ing of the memorialists will be agreeable and 
welcome." 

The second pilgrimage of the Church, deter- 
mined upon for such creditable reasons, and 
preceded by so dignified an introduction, took 
place on the first of May, 1609. Pastor Clyf- 
ton, now approaching old age, and preferring 
not to make further changes, remained in 
Amsterdam. Of those who went, there were 
about one hundred adults. Leyden was then 
a thriving city of one hundred thousand in- 
habitants ; and the Pilgrims soon found occu- 
pation amid its various industries, though com- 
pelled to practise the strictest diligence and 
frugality. 

The sojourn in Leyden was marked by much 
prosperity in spiritual affairs. Robinson was 
chosen pastor in place of Clyfton ; and Brew- 
ster, though nominally ruling elder, seems 
really to have acted as teacher, no one being 
elected to that office. There were, of course, 
the due number of deacons, and all church 
affairs were managed in the Congregational 
way, and to the promotion of harmony and 



58 The Pilgrims in Leyden, 

fellowship among the brethren, who "con- 
tinned many years in a comfortable condition, 
enjoying much sweet and delightful society 
and spiritual comfort together in the ways of 
God." a The pastor, at whose house the Church 
assembled for worship, was a man of rare 
ability and fidelity, the instructor of his people 
in spiritual things, and their wise adviser in 
everyday affairs, so that they "had ever a rev- 
erent regard to him, and had him in precious 
estimation as his worth and wisdom did de- 
serve." 1 He wrote a number of works, some 
of them defending Separatism, and some cor- 
recting the errors of Separatists themselves. 
He was admitted a member of the University, 
was in high esteem among some of its professors, 
and on one occasion, by urgent request of the 
Calvinists, became their champion, and won 
what was called "a famous victory" in a public 
disputation with the Arminian, Episcopius. 

The fellowship of the churches, that great 
centripetal force of Congregationalism, began 
to operate during this epoch. The Amsterdam 
brethren applied to those in Leyden for advice 

i Bradford. 



The Pilgrims in Ley den. 59 

in their manifold difficulties. Correspondence, 
visitations, and consultations ensued ; and such 
aid was rendered as prudence and Christian 
courtesy dictated. The Leyden Church also 
received to their communion members of the 
Dutch and French Reformed Churches ; offered 
to do the same with Scotch Presbyterians, and, 
unlike other Separatists of the time, recog- 
nized the authenticity of the English Church 
and its sacraments, and the Christian character 
of its consistent members. 

The Congregationalism of the Leyden Pil- 
grims was thus a considerable advance upon 
that of preceding Separatists, and began to 
exhibit those marks which were to become per- 
manent in the system. In local church govern- 
ment there was greater freedom. The elder- 
ship was reduced to its minimum in quantity, 
and raised to its maximum in quality, both of 
which tended to its ultimate extinction. Pub- 
lic worship was informal and spiritual, but 
orderly and dignified. In the ministry high 
intellectual qualities and superior Christian 
character were demanded. A firm alliance was 
formed between religion and liberal education. 



60 Migration from Holland. 

The substance of Calvinism was accepted, 
but subjection to Calvin was distinctly repu- 
diated. The faces of the Pilgrims were turned 
toward that part of the spiritual horizon 
whence " more light" was expected to break 
forth. Their hearts they opened in fraternal 
sympathy to all who loved Christ. 

One more migration was necessary before 
their pilgrim condition could come to an end. 
The political situation in Holland, the dis- 
couraging prospects before them, the immoral 
influences surrounding their families, their 
desire to found a Christian community, possi- 
bly a nation, where they might secure for their 
children independence, comfort, education, and 
civil and religious liberty, decided them to seek 
a home in America. With great deliberation 
and prudence they formed their plans ; with 
great difficulty, and after three years of exas- 
perating delays, and against all but impossi- 
bilities, they accomplished their purpose. Part 
of the church, with Pastor Robinson, was to 
remain a while in Leyden ; the lesser remainder, 
with Elder Brewster, were to make the journey. 
The details are too familiar for repetition. 



Across the Sea. 61 

The little misnamed and ill-omened Speedwell, 
with its too precious freight, leaves Delft 
Haven, July 12-22, 1620, and after a short 
voyage, by favor of fair winds reaches South- 
ampton. Twenty -four days of vexation and 
imposition follow, and the Pilgrim company, 
augmented by some who have joined them 
in England, deserted by some who are disheart- 
ened, set sail — one hundred and twenty reso- 
lute souls — on the Mayflower and the Speed- 
well. The first rebuff of the ocean sends them 
back to Dartmouth for a fortnight's repairs 
upon the Speedwell. The second drives them 
to Plymouth, where she is discharged and 
abandoned. Leaving some of the most dis- 
couraged and some of the least eligible of their 
number, one hundred and two of them, with 
the outfit of a colony, crowd into the Mayflower, 
and take final leave of England, August 5-15. 
A tempestuous voyage of more than two 
months' duration brings them within sight of 
Cape Cod. Sea and wind conspire to thwart 
their design of settling farther to the south, 
and they anchor in Provincetown Harbor,- 
November 11-21. There is framed the civil 



62 Across the Sea. 

compact which constitutes them a body-politic 
— the promise and potency of a Christian 
republic. John Carver is elected governor; 
systematic exploration for a place of settlement 
follows ; and on December 11, Old Style, or 
December 21, New Style, the explorers find 
and fix upon "a place very good for situation," 
the future Plymouth. Here the exiles address 
themselves to the task which they have so 
solemnly undertaken, "for the glory of God 
and advancement of the Christian Faith, and 
honor of our King and Country, to plant the 
first colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia." 
They were not yet aware that their king had 
already granted a patent by which the northern 
parts of Virginia were named New England. 



CHAPTER VI. 
PURITAN COLONIZATION, 

Non-conformist migrations to America did 
not begin or end with the Pilgrims. The same 
causes which drove them into exile affected 
many others. Flying from the intolerance of 
James I, or from the fiercer fury of Charles, 
they found their way to this country, either 
directly or by way of Holland, in spite of royal 
edicts forbidding them admission to the more 
desirable colonies. Cromwell encouraged the 
movement — Charles II accelerated it by 
renewed persecution. Scarcely a ship-load of 
emigrants crossed the ocean, therefore, without 
its sprinkling of Non-conformists, ministers and 
laymen. Down the Atlantic coast and across 
the island groups, to the very shores of 
South America, stretched a chain of English 
settlements, all of them pervaded to some 
extent by Puritanism, and some of them 
dominated by it. 

In Virginia, between 1607 and 1621, besides 



64 Puritan Colonization. 

the Non-conformist element in the colony at 
large, two companies of Puritans from England, 
and one of Separatists from Holland, began 
local settlements. Twenty years later, a 
flourishing Congregational Church was estab- 
lished in Nansemond County, and held its 
ground in spite of persecution from the Church 
of England authorities in the colony, until 
banished in 1649. Taking refuge in Maryland, 
they settled in a body at Providence, and 
exerted an important influence in colonial 
affairs during the ascendency of the Puritan 
party, but finally became extinct. 

The Bermuda Islands were a favorite resort 
of Non-conformist refugees, a number of whom 
went out with the first colony in 1612. Sub- 
sequently a majority of both the settlers and 
their rulers were of that class. A Congre- 
gational Church was formed, and ministers 
of that denomination, particularly Nathaniel 
White, William Golding, and Patrick Cope- 
land, exerted for many years the leading re- 
ligious influence. Persecuted by the English 
Church, they escaped to the Bahamas, whence, 
after many misfortunes, they again migrated, 



Puritan Colonization. 65 

some going to the West Indies and some 
returning to England. 

On New Providence Island, also, a Congre- 
gational Church was formed ; and, notwith- 
standing considerable persecution, the island 
seemed likely at one time to attract large 
numbers of Non-conformists, especially from 
Yirginia and New England. But the Spanish 
Conquest in 1641 suddenly stopped immigra- 
tion, and brought the career of Congregation- 
alism in the Bahamas to a tragic and final 
close. 1 

In the English settlements in the Caribbee 
Islands, the West Indies, and even on the 
South American coast, Congregationalists 
were to be found ; and on the island of Barba- 
does a Congregational Church was organized. 
But the social and moral atmosphere then 
pervading tropical America was not favorable 
to such a system as Congregationalism, for 
which God had provided a less luxurious but 
more congenial home. From this hasty glance 
along the line of its southward migrations, 
therefore, we now return to the place of its 
permanent abode and development. 

i Punchard's Hist. Cong., vol. iv, p. 407. 



66 The Plymouth Colony. 

The original intention of the Pilgrims was 
to settle in Virginia. Had it been carried 
out, they would probably have met embarrass- 
ments and disasters similar to those encoun- 
tered by the Nansemond Church. But by the 
merciful violence of sea and storm they were 
thrust into a place of liberty and of safety. 
An earlier coming would have thrown them 
into the hands of savages. A later one would 
have left them to die of starvation. The 
natives had been swept off by pestilence, yet 
so recently that their stores of corn supplied 
the colonists with food. The surviving rem- 
nants of the tribe were insignificant as adver- 
saries, but indispensable as neighbors. 

Yet the providence which thus appointed 
the time and the place for this great under- 
taking did not divest it of difficulty. Half of 
the colonists died of sickness and want during 
the first winter. The remainder persevered in 
the enterprise. Better days followed ; houses 
were built ; industry was organized ; trade was 
opened with the natives on the one hand, and 
with the Mother Country on the other. New 
recruits came from Leyden and from England. 



The Plymouth Church. 67 

Friendly relations were established with the 
Indians, who not only furnished the colonists 
with the material for their commerce, and the 
seed for their crops, but actually taught them 
the arts of fishery and of agriculture. Miles 
Standish, the doughty soldier, kept the settle- 
ment in a defensive condition. Governor 
Carver and his successor, William Bradford, 
regulated civil affairs in submission to the 
popular will. 

The Plymouth Church was peculiarly sit- 
uated. John Robinson, its pastor, had re- 
mained at Leyden, with a portion of the 
Church, expecting at the proper time to ac- 
company them to this country. But through 
the niggardliness or jealousy of certain of 
their financial supporters in England, his 
removal was deferred year after year, until his 
death in 1625. The Church consequently had 
no ordained minister for eight or ten years. 
William Brewster, the ruling elder, performed, 
however, most of the duties of a minister of 
the gospel, excepting the administration of 
the ordinances. This condition of the Church, 
which seemed to them one of great hardship, 



68 The Plymouth Church. 

proved fortunate for them and for Congrega- 
tionalism. It educated the membership, 
increasing the sense of individual responsibil- 
ity, and proved that the vitality and efficiency 
of a church need not depend upon its minister. 
Discipline, public worship, the benevolent 
work of the Church, the administration of 
ecclesiastical affairs, — all went on with propri- 
ety and regularity. The " exercise of prophe- 
sying," to which the brethren had happily been 
trained at Leyden, was no bad substitute for 
preaching. A sermon delivered by Robert 
Cushman, layman, during his visit to his breth- 
ren in 1621, was published in England, and 
helped to call attention to the colony. This 
discourse, on the text, "Look not every man 
on his own things, but every man also on the 
things of others," is not only interesting as 
" the first printed American sermon," 1 but 
exceedingly significant as an exponent of the 
spirit in which the Pilgrims began the settle- 
ment of New England. We shall have occa- 
sion more than once to notice the part taken 
by these laymen in shaping the ecclesiastical 

1 Bacon's Genesis of the N. E. Churches, p. 353, note. 



The Salem Church. 69 

affairs of neighboring colonies. Having first 
demonstrated that they could thrive without a 
shepherd, and afterward that they could thrive 
in spite of some shepherds that were worse 
than none, they came in due time under the 
care of godly men who labored among them, 
not as lords over God's heritage, but as the 
chief among brethren. 

The Puritan settlements in Massachusetts 
Bay began, in 1623, with the attempted estab- 
lishment of a colony at Cape Ann, under the 
superintendence of Roger Conant and the 
pastoral care of the Rev. Mr. Lyford. Its ill 
success at that point led to its removal in 1626 
to Salem, where it permanently remained, and 
was augmented by fresh immigration from 
England. John Endicott was its first gov- 
ernor. A church was promptly organized 
whose members, although in England they had 
been loyal to the National Church, and had 
repudiated and abhorred Separatism, yet when 
left to their own unconstrained choice, in the 
light of Scripture, adopted the Congregational 
polity. They seem to have been much aided 
in reaching this choice by the counsels of 



70 The Salem Church. 

Plymouth men, especially of Dr. Samuel Fuller, 
deacon, who was present on professional duty. 
Having settled preliminaries, and chosen the 
Rev. Samuel Skelton, pastor, and the Rev. 
Francis Higginson, teacher, the Salem brethren 
went a step beyond all previous Congregational 
usage, by inviting the church at Plymouth 
to send delegates to participate in the organiza- 
tion of the Church and the ordination of its 
ministers. The method of procedure in the 
formation of this second Congregational Church 
in America, and the first to be organized on 
American soil, is worthy of note. First, after 
a day of fasting and prayer, the organization 
was agreed upon, and the pastor, the teacher, 
one ruling elder, and two deacons were chosen 
by vote. Seventeen days later — August 6, 
1629 — another day of fasting and prayer was 
held ; the thirty persons who were to form the 
nucleus of the church professed their faith, and 
entered into solemn covenant " with the Lord 
and one another " ; then certain brethren 
"appointed by the Church," laid their hands 
upon the heads of the officers-elect, Messrs. 
Higginson and Skelton participating in each 



Salem and Dorchester. 71 

other's ordination. The Plymouth delegation, 
with Governor Bradford at their head, delayed 
by unpropitious winds, arrived toward the close 
of the exercises, but soon enough to present 
fraternal salutations, and wish " all prosperity 
and blessed success unto such good begin- 
nings." 1 Thus were asserted the two cardinal 
principles of Congregationalism — the compe- 
tency of the local church to manage its own 
affairs, even to the ordination of its ministers, 
and the privilege and desirability of fellowship 
between churches. 

Large accessions came to the Massachusetts 
Colony in 1629-30. Indeed, the Massachusetts 
Company was virtually, and its charter and 
franchise were actually, transferred to this 
country, under John Winthrop as governor. 
The first company of 140 organized as a Con- 
gregational Church before leaving England, 
choosing the Rev. John Maverick as pastor, and 
the Rev. John Warham as teacher. Reaching 
America in 1630, they settled at Dorchester. 
During the ensuing summer no less than thir- 
teen vessels came over, bringing settlers who 

1 Punchard, iv, 19. 



72 Marly Churches in Massachusetts. 

established themselves at various places in the 
vicinity of Boston. A Congregational Church 
was formed at Charlestown, with the Rev. John 
Wilson as teacher, and one at Watertown, with 
the Rev. George Phillips as pastor. In 1631, 
a considerable part of the Charlestown Church, 
including Governor Winthrop, removed to 
Boston ; and in the year following a separate 
church was formed at Charlestown, making the 
sixth in New England. 

Migration followed migration, as religious 
intolerance in England furnished the repellent 
motive ; or the prospect of freedom or the 
success of American enterprise furnished the 
attracting one. Many names now illustrious 
in history were inscribed on the roll of immi- 
grants. There were John Eliot, the apostle 
to the Indians ; John Cotton, the distinguished 
pastor of the First Church of Boston, and still 
more distinguished as the expounder of Con- 
gregationalism ; Richard Hooker, of Cambridge, 
afterward of Hartford, and, like Cotton, eminent 
both in authorship and in the pulpit, with 
divers others, ministers and laymen, including 
men of wealth, culture, and reputation. The 



Secondary Migrations, 73 

church polity of the first colonists was followed 
by those who came after. And so active was 
the work of organization that, within twenty 
years after the landing of the Pilgrims, thirty- 
five Congregational churches had been formed, 
twenty-nine of them within the limits of what 
is now Massachusetts. 

Secondary migrations were in the meantime 
going forward. Plymouth furnished the nuclei 
of collateral settlements at Scituate, Duxbury, 
Barnstable, Marshfield, Yarmouth, etc., weak- 
ening the mother church, but establishing 
new centres of religious life. The Dorchester 
Church emigrated to Windsor, Connecticut, 
in 1635. The Newtown (Cambridge) people, 
with their ministers, Messrs. Hooker and Stone, 
removed in a body to Hartford, in 1636. In 
1638, an English colony, with the Rev. John 
Davenport, settled at New Haven. These three 
eminent ministers, and these three pioneer 
churches, laid the foundation of Connecticut 
Congregationalism. 

New Hampshire was settled by English 
Puritans and by emigrants from Massachu- 
setts. Churches were formed at Dover, 



74 New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island. 

Hampton, Exeter, and Portsmouth, but had a 
later and slower growth than those in Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut. 

In Maine, colonization had been unsuccessful- 
ly attempted before the time of the Plymouth 
enterprise. Afterward, small settlements were 
begun from time to time at various places on 
the coast; but little permanent progress was 
made, and no firm foothold was gained by Con- 
gregationalism until toward the latter part of 
the century. 

Rhode Island became a place of refuge for 
extremists in opinion, and had a very peculiar 
denominational history. Roger Williams was 
a devout, conscientious, and courageous man, 
possessing many admirable qualities of mind 
and heart, but with certain eccentric notions 
concerning civil and ecclesiastical affairs, and 
an offensive way of propagating them. Invited 
to preach to the Boston Church in its pastor's 
absence, and declining because it would not 
proceed to the extreme of separation, he was 
called by the Salem people, but the magistrates 
frowning, he went to Plymouth, where he acted 
for some two years as an assistant to the Rev. 



The Antinomian Controversy. 75 

Ralph Smith ; when he went to Salem for some 
two years. Of his banishment, its causes and 
its significance, we have neither space nor occa- 
sion to speak at length. It was the act, not of 
the Church, but of the civil power; not on 
account of his opinions, but for speech and 
conduct which were held, justly or unjustly, to 
be disloyal, disorderly, and seditious. In 1636, 
with a few adherents, he went first to Seekonk, 
and then to Providence, where he founded a 
colony and a denomination. 

Two or three years later Rhode Island 
received another company of exiles — the 
Hutchinsons and their followers. Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, a member of the church in Boston, 
held certain views concerning sanctiflcation, 
assurance, special revelation, the personal in- 
dwelling of the Holy Ghost, etc., which were 
adopted, wholly or in part, by great numbers, 
including some ministers. A fierce controversy 
sprang up, known as the Antinomian Contro- 
versy, throwing the whole colony into excite- 
ment. The Antinomians denounced their op- 
ponents as anti- Christ, and disturbed their 
meetings by questions and contradiction. A 



76 Long Island and New Jersey. 

general synod, or convention, of all the minis- 
ters in New England — the first meeting of this 
kind ever held in this country — convened at 
Cambridge, August 30, 1637, to consider the 
situation. They unanimously condemned the 
Antinomian heresies. Afterward the General 
Court banished Mrs. Hutchinson and some of 
her most obnoxious followers, while others were 
fined and disfranchised. This sentence, like 
that of Mr. Williams, proceeded from the civil 
power, and was believed to be required for the 
public good. Mrs. Hutchinson was also excom- 
municated from the Church, though she was 
affectionately labored with, both before and 
after her removal. 

In New York and New Jersey the precedence 
of Dutch emigration ensured that of Presby- 
terianism. Yet Congregationalism, though it 
made a more tardy appearance, and found a 
somewhat less congenial soil than in New 
England, came in due time. An English col- 
ony went to Southold, L. L, in 1640. Emigrants 
from Massachusetts and Connecticut made set- 
tlements and formed Congregational churches, 
between 1640 and 1670, at Hempstead, South 



Long Island and New Jersey. 77 

and East Hampton, Newton, Brookhaven, etc., 
on Long Island, and at Elizabethtown, Newark, 
and many other places in New Jersey. These 
churches were organized upon the New England 
plan, and throughout the period now under 
review, maintained their polity in its integrity ; 
although in the next generation, from causes 
the discussion of which does not belong here, 
most of them became Presbyterian. • 

Meantime, New England Congregationalism 
was not only extending its boundaries and its 
influence, but developing into a somewhat well- 
defined system. The steps in that development 
will be more particularly followed in another 
chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 
NATIVE AMERICAN CONGREGATIONALISM. 

The Congregational exodus of the seven- 
teenth century has been roughly traced — the 
flight from bondage, the way through the sea, 
the first forty years in the wilderness, the 
entrance of the exiles upon their destined pos- 
session — a land of promise, not lying beyond 
the wilderness, but created out of it. 

Transplanted from the Old World to the 
New, Congregationalism began at once to lose 
its foreign peculiarities, and to take on a 
distinctively American character. We have 
already seen traces of this change, both at 
Plymouth and in neighboring colonies. Sepa- 
ratism and Puritanism, the two types of Non- 
conformity which met in New England, finding 
there no obnoxious system to conform to, or 
separate from, dropped the tone of denial, and 
cultivated what was positive in their own 
systems. For the same reason, they ceased 



Early Congregational Usages. 79 

to antagonize one another. The Pilgrims had 
regarded the Puritans as compromised with 
sin, by their fellowship with the Established 
Church. The Puritans had regarded the Pil- 
grims as schismatics and apostates, for seceding 
from that Church. But the Church being 
once out of the question, they found much 
in common. Both repudiated the Prelacy. 
Both demanded purity in the Church and godly 
fidelity in the ministry. Both maintained the 
supreme authority of the Scriptures. Further 
acquaintance and mutual counsel did much 
to unify their faith and to unite their hearts. 
The Pilgrims taught the Puritans some lessons 
in church democracy ; the Puritans taught the 
Pilgrims a new application of the principle 
of church-fellowship. Thus out of these two 
types of Non-conformity were evolved two 
types of Congregationalism, the resemblances 
and differences of which will appear more 
clearly as we go on. 

Early Congregational usages in New England 
interest us in two ways: They show some of 
the mistakes which the denomination has out- 
grown, and reveal the genesis and the develop- 



80 Early Congregational Usages. 

ment of our system. Sabbath services were 
held morning and afternoon, being announced 
by a bell, a drum, a horn, a shell, or a flag, 
according to the resources of the congregation. 
They consisted of prayer, the reading and 
exposition of Scripture, the singing of Psalms, 
"lined off'- by an elder, "prophesying" (that 
is, preaching), a collection, and the administra- 
tion of the sacraments. Sometimes the prophe- 
sying was participated in by two or more 
different prophets on the same occasion. Ques- 
tions might be propounded by any male mem- 
ber of the congregation. The Sunday-school 
was not known ; prayer-meetings and mid-week 
lectures were observed. Marriages were held 
to be civil contracts, to be solemnized not by 
ministers but by magistrates. Funerals, also, 
required no service from the clergyman ; 
though the offering of prayer by him, if he 
were present, was gradually introduced. 

A minister was ordained by the church which 
he was to serve ; and his office and his right to 
administer ordinances ceased when his relation 
to that particular church was dissolved. They 
therefore did not recognize ordination in the 



Early Congregational Usages, 81 

English Church as conferring any permanent 
ministerial character. John Cotton would not 
baptize his own child, born on shipboard, be- 
cause there was no church there, and conse- 
quently the circumstances did not authorize 
the ordinance. In the service of ordination 
the laying-on of hands might be performed by 
other ministers present, at the special request 
of the ordaining church, but was commonly by 
elders or selected lay members of that church. 
The distinction between pastors and teachers, 
though theoretically maintained, grew less and 
less prominent, chiefly because few of the 
churches needed or could support two minis- 
ters. The ruling eldership was retained more 
tenaciously, but gradually fell into disuse. The 
preaching, teaching, and ruling elders of a 
church constituted the governing body. They 
were chosen by the members, were responsible 
to them, and ostensibly could do nothing with- 
out their assent. That assent, however, was in 
most churches merely nominal, often denoted 
by silence only, while expressed dissent was a 
misdemeanor. The membership delegated its 
ruling power once for all to the elders, and 



82 General Synods. 

must thereafter submit to them. This was the 
essential feature of that " middle-way " between 
Brownism and Presbyterianism, expounded by 
John Cotton, and endorsed by the Cambridge 
Platform. The system grew out of the dis- 
trust and almost abhorrence of democracy, and 
waned just as fast as democratic ideas were 
developed, passing out of use before the close 
of the colonial period. 

The Plymouth Church seems to have enjoyed 
a larger liberty than others, and to have fol- 
lowed more Congregational methods, partly 
on account of its Separatist antecedents, and 
partly from the necessity of its position, 
already alluded to. 

The fellowship of the churches was more 
and more freely enjoyed as the sisterhood of 
churches increased. Councils were called for 
nearly all purposes for which they are now 
resorted to. Each invited church sent as many 
delegates as it saw fit, sometimes two or three, 
sometimes from five to ten. 

Six synods were held during the seventeenth 
century, a brief notice of which will furnish 
some indices of the drift of Congregational 



General Synods. 83 

thought during that period. The first met at 
Cambridge in 1637, to consider the Antinomian 
heresy. It was composed of twenty-five minis- 
ters, with some other delegates. It condemned 
eighty-two errors of opinion, and laid down 
certain rules of procedure in matters of dis- 
cipline. The next synod met at Cambridge 
in 1643, the year of the Westminster Assembly. 
About fifty ministers and some ruling elders 
were present. It discussed the Presbyterianism 
advocated by some of the clergy, particularly 
by the Rev. Messrs. Parker and Noyes, of Dux- 
bury, Mass., as opposed to the "very middle 
way" of Cotton and his school, the question 
turning upon the amount of authority residing 
in the eldership. " The assembly concluded 
against some parts of the presbyterial way." 
The third synod was held also at Cambridge 
in 1646, with adjourned sessions in each of the 
two years following. It met at the " desire " 
of the Massachusetts General Court, but em- 
braced delegations from the other New Eng- 
land colonies. Its purpose was to agree upon 
a formal declaration of the principles and 
practices of the churches represented. Its 



84 The Half-way Covenant. 

result is familiar to us as the Cambridge 
Platform. In 1657 a synod, called by the 
Massachusetts Court, met at Boston, to con- 
sider the ecclesiastical rights and privileges 
of non-church members. Its conclusions fore- 
shadowed the " Half-way Covenant," but had 
little weight with the churches. Another 
synod was therefore called to meet at Boston 
in 1662. It comprised more than seventy 
members. After twice adjourning and re-assem- 
bling, it adopted a report inaugurating that most 
unhappy experiment of early New England 
Congregationalism — the Half-way Covenant. 
Its design was to secure to the churches the 
allegiance of a large and influential class of 
moral but unregenerate persons, particularly 
the baptized children of church members. 
They were to be admitted to a quasi-m ember- 
ship, entitling them to certain privileges, 
including the baptism of their children, but 
not admission to the Lord's table. The 
Covenant was strenuously opposed by many 
ministers and laymen, but found increasing, 
and finally general, acceptance among the 
churches, greatly to the detriment of their 



Harvard College. 85 

spirituality. In 1679 the sixth synod was 
called, in view of certain public calamities, 
regarded as judgments for the prevailing 
moral and spiritual declension. The synod 
did not connect this declension with the Half- 
way Covenant, but enumerated a long cata- 
logue of sins, public and private, and pointed 
out the particular acts of reformation which 
were needed. It also re-affirmed the Cambridge 
Platform, " for the substance of ijb." The 
effect of the synod was very salutary, although 
it dealt with symptoms rather than with causes. 
Educational institutions were early provided 
for by our fathers. Laws and appropriations 
to this end were decreed, common schools were 
established in every town, and many schools 
of higher grade were founded. In 1636 the 
General Court of Massachusetts appropriated 
four hundred pounds sterling to found " a school 
or college" at Cambridge. The income of 
Charlestown ferry was added, and every church 
was required to contribute twelve pence or a 
peck of corn. In 1638 the Rev. John Harvard 
died, leaving seven or eight hundred pounds 
to the college, which was therefore named for 



86 Literature. — Theocracy. 

liim. The synod of 1637, Governor Winthrop 
tells us, " sat in the college, and had their diet 
there after the manner of scholars' commons." 

One of the sins deplored by the synod of 
16T9 was " causing schools of learning to 
languish." One of the reformatory measures 
enjoined by the same synod was " that care be 
taken that the College and all schools of 
learning in every place be promoted and 
encouraged." The injunction was heeded, and 
educational work was prosecuted with renewed 
energy. Though Harvard continued till the 
close of the century to be " the College," 
plans and efforts for the establishment of a 
similar institution at New Haven were begun 
in 1654, and renewed from time to time until 
finally successful. 

A printing-press was established at Cam- 
bridge in 1639. Its first publication of im- 
portance, and the very first of American books, 
was a metrical version of the Psalms, commonly 
known as the Bay Psalm Book. In 1690 
a monthly newspaper was started, under the 
title of "Public Occurrences, Foreign and 
Domestic" but was soon suppressed for offen- 



Literature, — Theocracy. 87 

sive "reflections." To the voluminous litera- 
ture of Non-conformity in the seventeenth 
century, 1 the New England Congregationalists 
made some very valuable contributions of 
works historical, controversial, theological, and 
practical. At first they commonly published 
in England, but afterward were well served 
by American printers. Among the original 
colonists, the more noted authors were Gov- 
ernors Bradford and Winthrop, and the Rev. 
Messrs. Cotton, Hooker, Davenport, and Eliot. 
Later in the century appeared Increase and 
Cotton Mather and many others. 

The New England Theocracy was one of the 
most remarkable products of American Con- 
gregationalism. The Pilgrims landed at Ply- 
mouth already organized both as a church 
and as a body politic. Both organizations 
were democratic; both were Christian. Their 
purpose was chiefly religious. They knew no 
higher authority than that of Scripture, no 
sounder principles than those of the gospel. 
They were Congregationalists, and saw no 

i Dr. Dexter's catalogue gives nearly a hundred closely printed 
pages of titles. See " Congregationalism as Seen in its Literature," 
appendix, pp. 17-114. 



88 The Next) England Theocracy. 

reason why the method that worked well in 
Church affairs should not work equally well 
in affairs of State. The two bodies were inde- 
pendent, yet harmonious and mutually helpful. 
They were largely composed of the same men 
acting in different capacities, and applying to 
different departments of life the principles of 
Christian fraternity and equality. 

In the Puritan colonies the theocratic idea 
was even more prominent, though the inde- 
pendency of Church and State was less dis- 
tinctly maintained. The Massachusetts com- 
pany was really a missionary organization. 
"The propagation of the gospel," said they, 
"is the thing we profess above all in settling 
this plantation." When the Salem Church 
was to be organized, Governor Endicott 
appointed a day of fasting and prayer. He 
made formal acknowledgments to Governor 
Bradford of the aid of Plymouth men in 
settling the question of polity. Whatever 
affected the religious interests of the people 
was regarded as affecting the public weal, and 
therefore as coming under the cognizance of the 
rulers. Ministers were sent out by the company, 



The New England Theocracy. 89 

and provided for at public expense. Open im- 
piety and obtrusive heresy were treated as 
public offences. The law and the gospel being 
a part of the civil code, whatever was opposed 
to thern was. of course unconstitutional. Mr. 
Cotton and others elaborated a system of gov- 
ernment based strictly upon the Mosaic code 
and the New Testament. After six years of 
discussion and many modifications, it was 
adopted by the Massachusetts Colony, first 
tentatively, and then permanently, under the 
title of the Body of Liberties. It was followed 
substantially in the codes of other colonies, and 
has well been called " The New England Magna 
Charta." One of its provisions not adopted 
in the Plymouth or the Connecticut Colony 
was that which made church membership 
a condition of citizenship. The Cambridge 
Platform, while it protests that the churches 
and the magistrates should not intermeddle 
with one another's proper functions, insists 
upon their cooperation, and declares it to be 
a part of the magistrate's duty to promote 
godliness and to "restrayn and punish," not 
only individual blasphemers and heretics, but 
schismatic churches. 



90 The '-'•Plantation Covenant" 

The " Plantation Covenant " adopted by the 
New Haven Colony, and after them by other 
settlements, north and south, was a solemn 
agreement that in all things, ecclesiastical and 
civil," they would all of them be ordered by the 
rules which the scriptures held forth to them." 
It provided for the organization first of the 
church and then of the commonwealth, " church 
members only [to be] free burgesses." In the 
Plymouth and the Connecticut Colonies, as has 
been said, this limitation of citizenship was not 
imposed; and it was subsequently forbidden 
altogether by the king, though morality of life 
and orthodoxy of faith were still insisted on. 

In 1643 the four colonies formed a voluntary 
union for the promotion of the common weal. 
It was the analogue of church-fellowship, as the 
local government was the analogue of the local 
church, and was the germ and prophecy of 
national federation. Its purpose was declared 
to be "to advance the kingdom of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the 
gospel in purity with peace." Thus under one 
form or another the theocratic idea asserted 
itself. The colonists, as Christians, could not 



Alleged Persecutions. 91 

think of governing themselves otherwise than 
according to the Word of God. Nor could they 
easily believe it safe or right that unchristian 
men should govern at all. 

The religious persecutions for which the 
early New England churches have been so much 
abused must be studied in the light of the facts 
just given. In a state of society where the 
magistrates and an overwhelming majority of 
the citizens were of a certain faith, and in a 
country whose first settlers had expatriated 
themselves, and risked and sacrificed and suf- 
fered so much for that faith, we must not too 
harshly denounce measures which would be in- 
excusable in our own generation. When John 
and Samuel Browne dissented from the Congre- 
gationalism of the Salem Church, set up Church 
of England worship, called the ministers hard 
names, and offended against the public peace by 
" speeches and practices tending to mutiny and 
faction," they were sent back to England. 
When the Rev. John Lyford ingratiated himself 
into the confidence of the Plymouth people, 
wrote slanderous letters about them to England, 
and conspired with disreputable characters in 



92 Alleged Persecutions. 

the colony to bring about " a reformation in 
church and commonwealth," meaning the intro- 
duction of the Church of England service and 
the overthrow of democracy, he and his accom- 
plice, Oldham, were banished as defamers and 
conspirators, though the justice of the sentence 
was tempered with much mercy in its execu- 
tion. 

The case of Roger Williams and that of the 
Hutchinsons has been reviewed in a previous 
chapter. As in those above cited, action was 
based, not upon their opinions, but upon words 
and actions held to be seditious. Thomas 
Painter, another Baptist, was whipped at Hing- 
ham in 1644, not as a martyr of religious liberty, 
but for interfering with the religious liberty of 
his wife, by preventing the baptism of her child. 
The proceedings against the Quakers were for 
similar reasons. They disturbed the peace, de- 
nouncing the ministers and the public officers 
as "hirelings and the seed of the serpent." The 
attempt to suppress them by force was no doubt 
unwise and unfortunate ; but it was not made 
through bigotry. 

We can not deny, however, that religious 



Religious Toleration. 93 

uniformity was sought in all the colonies, and 
that in Massachusetts at least it was regarded 
as of vital importance. Laws against heresy 
were enacted from time to time, but were 
seldom if ever enforced, except against dis- 
orderly persons. 

The Episcopal controversy was of a different 
character. It grew out of the attempt of 
the English archbishops, sustained by royal 
authority, to impose upon the colonists the 
very system to escape which they had fled 
from their native land. The controversy, 
chiefly verbal, was carried on for a century 
and a half, and furnished the New England 
colonists one of the strongest reasons for 
wishing to throw off the English yoke. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LAST HALF OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 

The eighteenth century found American 
Congregationalism greatly extended and 
strengthened. Puritan settlements were mul- 
tiplied, not only in New England, but on other 
parts of the Atlantic coast, and commonly 
included Congregational churches. In South 
Carolina, where much religious liberty pre- 
vailed, and great pains had been taken to attract 
New England emigrants, two noted Congre- 
gational churches were formed, one at Charles- 
ton, known in later times as the Circular 
Church, and one at Dorchester, where a char- 
acteristic New England colony was established, 
afterward removed to Georgia. But the prin- 
cipal growth of the denomination — if we may 
apply such a term to that which had not yet 
been denominated — was in New England, 
where, in a population of say 150,000 souls, 
there were not less than 160 Congregational 
churches. 



Indian Relations. 95 

The Indian question was already an impor- 
tant one. Most of the early colonists were dis- 
posed to treat the natives fairly, and to recog- 
nize their rights as the original occupants of the 
soil. Much of the land was obtained from them 
by purchase or by treaty, and friendly relations 
were at first maintained without difficulty. 
The Plymouth colonists, as we have seen, ob- 
tained their first supply of food and of seed, 
and received their first lessons in successful 
industry, from the natives. It was the un- 
scrupulous conduct of the settlers at Wessa- 
gusset — men who feared not God nor regarded 
man — that first awakened in the Indian mind 
distrust and antagonism toward white men, 
and provoked the conspiracy, the execution of 
whose leaders called forth the touching lament 
of John Robinson, that his people had not con- 
verted some Indians before killing ?mj. The 
work of conversion, however, received due at- 
tention. It was avowed by the Massachusetts 
company to be a chief object of their enter- 
prise, and was equally prominent in the plans 
of other colonies. John Eliot, the apostle to 
the Indians, entered upon his work in 1631, and 



96 Effects of the Half-way Covenant. 

the pastors and churches generally labored to 
the same end. At the close of the seventeenth 
century thirty or more Indian Congregational 
churches had been formed, each with its own 
native pastor. But partly through the bad 
faith of individuals, and partly through the 
inability of the two races to understand one 
another's ideas and traditions, conflicts arose, 
culminating in that long series of Indian 
wars which not only interrupted missionary 
work, but greatly affected the whole religious 
life of the colonists. 

The effects of the Half-way Covenant were 
referred to in the previous chapter, but need 
further notice in this connection. Instead of 
encouraging the half-way members to qualify 
themselves for full membership in the 
churches, the covenant tended either to ren- 
der them content with the partial privileges 
thus secured, or to lead them to demand 
under it the privileges of full membership, 
including the right to partake of the Lord's 
supper. To these demands many churches 
acceded, some by informal practice, others by 
deliberate vote. In consequence, the number 



Consoeiationism. 97 

of persons " owning the covenant " was greatly 
increased, so as sometimes to include almost 
the entire community, and to obliterate the 
distinction between regenerate and unregen- 
erate character. 

An ecclesiastical degeneracy followed the 
decay of personal piety. Congregationalism, 
being based upon a regenerate membership, 
must, as Increase Mather declared, "stand or 
fall as godliness in the power of it does pre- 
vail or otherwise." In this case it was too 
often " otherwise," and the most lamentable 
results followed. Churches were rent by 
grievous dissensions within themselves; they 
failed to exercise Christian fellowship one 
with another; councils assumed powers not 
belonging to them, sometimes contradicting 
and nullifying one another's proceedings, and 
often gaining only the contempt of the 
churches. These disorders filled good men's 
minds with distress, and loudly called for a 
remedy. 

Consoeiationism was the remedy proposed. 
It was the conception of the Barrowist party 
in New England. They believed the inevi- 



98 Consociationism. 

table tendency of democracy to be toward dis- 
organization, and had no hope of stability for 
the churches except through centralization, 
and the restoration of authority to the elder- 
ship. Their conception of Congregationalism 
was that of a "middle way" between Presby- 
terianism and Independency; and they now 
sought a middle way between Presbyterianism 
and Congregationalism. That middle way was 
Consociationism. Its essential principles were 
not unfamiliar. In 1665 John Eliot, in a tract 
called " The Divine Ordinance of Councils," 
had proposed a system of councils, — local, 
provincial, national, and ecumenical, — to which 
all churches should be accountable, and by 
which they should be supervised and regu- 
lated. The tract produced little impression 
and no results, though some of the principles 
advocated by it were held by many other 
ministers of his own and the following gener- 
ation. In 1700 the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of 
Northampton, published a plea for a National 
Church, having provincial divisions and local 
subdivisions or classes, the supreme authority 
to be vested, not in the individual church, but 



The Boston Proposals. 99 



in the national body. The proposition was 
significant, and was ably argued, but pro- 
duced no practical effect. 

In 1705 the Boston Association of minis- 
ters submitted to the "Associated Ministers 
of the several parts of the country " certain 
"Proposals," designed to secure to councils 
"due constitution and efficacy in supporting, 
preserving, and well-ordering the interests of 
the churches in the country." The Proposals 
contemplated the organization of associations 
of ministers, each with its stated moderator, 
to which should be referred matters of im- 
portance concerning the churches, such as the 
examination of candidates for the ministry, 
the securing of pastors for churches, the call- 
ing of councils, and " the direction of proceed- 
ing" therein and the decision of doubtful 
questions. The associations were to hold a 
delegated meeting annually; and any neglect 
of them by ministers within their bounds was 
to be a matter of investigation, and possibly 
of discipline. The pastors forming an associ- 
ation, together with lay delegates annually 
chosen by the churches, were to constitute a 



100 The Connecticut Plan. 

Standing Council, which should meet annually, 
and to which should be referred all such ques- 
tions as were commonly referred to councils. 
Its decisions were ordinarily to be conclusive, 
though an appeal might, for sufficient reason, 
be taken to. a special council called for that 
purpose by the association. The plan met 
little favor in Massachusetts, outside of the 
association which originated it. 

Three years later, 1708, upon the sum- 
mons of the General Court of Connecticut, a 
synod, composed of twelve ministerial and 
four lay delegates, met at Saybrook and 
adopted a plan closely resembling that of the 
Boston Proposals. It provided for ministerial 
associations meeting at least twice a year, 
with a delegated joint-meeting once a year. 
The associations were to consult concerning 
matters of importance to ministers or 
churches; to examine candidates for the min- 
istry; to take notice of ministerial offences, 
and, when necessary, call councils for the ex- 
amination of such cases; to advise churches 
concerning the securing of pastors, and to 
complain to the Court of such churches as 



The Saybrook Platform. 101 

neglected to secure pastors. Parallel with 
these Associations were to be Consociations, 
composed of the elders and standing lay dele- 
gations chosen by the churches, which should 
thus "consociate for mutual affording to each 
other such assistance as may be requisite upon 
all occasions ecclesiastical." The churches 
were required to cooperate with the Consocia- 
tion and submit to its decisions upon pain of 
being disfellowshiped. To the Consociation 
were to be referred all cases of scandal in the 
churches. Two Consociations might unite in 
the trial of important cases when necessary. 
Besides adopting the Consociational system, 
the Saybrook Synod expressed its approval of 
the " Heads of Agreement " adopted by the 
London Independent and Presbyterian minis- 
ters in 1690, and voted that they " be observed 
by the churches throughout this colony." 
It also re-affirmed the Savoy Confession, and 
asked that it be officially proclaimed by the 
Court " as the faith of the churches of this 
colony." The Court accepted the Saybrook 
Platform as the unanimous verdict of the 
churches, and required its uniform observance 



102 Reaction, 

throughout the colony ; although the different 
Consociations put widely different constructions 
upon the phraseology of the platform. 

A vigorous reaction against this system, and 
against the tendencies of thought from which 
it sprang, at once set in ; and a conflict began 
which proved one of the most remarkable, and, 
on the whole, one of the most salutary, in the 
history of Congregationalism. Its duration 
almost entitles it to be called our Hundred 
Years' War. The Rev. John Wise, of Ipswich, 
Mass., assailed the Proposals in two notable 
volumes : " The Churches' Quarrel Espoused," 
published in 1710 ; and " A Vindication of the 
Government of the New England Churches," 
published in 1717. He was the Martin Mar- 
prelate of the eighteenth century ; and by his 
exposure and ridicule of the fallacies of the 
Consociationists, and his vindication of the 
rights of the " People or Fraternity, under the 
Gospel," as the "first subject of Power," did 
more than any other man of his time to recall 
the churches to the primitive order. 1 Consocia- 
tionism gained no footing outside of Connecti- 

1 Dexter's " Congregationalism as Seen in its Literature," pp. 494- 



Spiritual Declension. 103 

cut ; and there it was subjected to explanations 
and modifications which reduced it to the con- 
dition of a harmless anomaly. In 1725 the 
Boston ministers, under the lead of Cotton 
Mather, made an effort to have a synod called 
by the General Court, after the former fashion, 
to consider and prescribe for the ills of the 
churches ; but the project failed, never to be 
revived. The rising spirit of liberty pervaded 
the minds of the people more and more exten- 
sively, and not only brought about in the 
churches that independence of clerical control 
for which Wise and others contended, but 
developed a type of ecclesiastical democracy 
far beyond all that the most radical reformers 
had contemplated. 

But vital piety languished during this polem- 
ical period. The standard of Christian charac- 
ter was lowered, and did not necessarily include 
regeneration. The churches were full of uncon- 
verted members, and sometimes, it would seem, 
were served by unconverted pastors. All the 
more earnestly, therefore, did the faithful pray 
and work for God's reviving power. Nor was 
their faith in vain. Scarcely had the first third 



104 The Great Awakening, 

of the century passed, when there began a pro- 
found spiritual movement, which thrilled the 
churches through and through, lifted them out 
of their formalism and worldliness, and ushered 
in a new dispensation. 

The Great Awakening, as this movement 
was called, was a series of revivals, extending 
through a period of eight or nine years, 1734- 
1742. They were characterized by an intensity 
of feeling and by convulsions and overturnings 
of religious life proportioned to the spiritual 
death which had preceded them. The pulpit 
rang with stern rebukes of sin, and with 
unsparing exposures of the hypocrisies and 
delusions of spurious professors. The vital 
truths of the gospel were proclaimed with a 
plainness and power which pierced "to the 
dividing of soul and spirit and of the joints 
and marrow." Under the preaching of such 
sons of thunder as Edwards, Whitefield, and 
the Tennents, men's hearts were smitten as by 
the voice of God. Even after the intensity of 
the movement had subsided, and the period 
of criticism and of a somewhat reactionary 
feeling had succeeded, the work did not cease. 



Close of the Colonial Period. 105 

Revivals were of frequent occurrence until 
the very eve of the Revolution. It is esti- 
mated that there resulted from these revivals 
not less than fifty thousand conversions. 1 

Many substantial gains accrued to Congrega- 
tionalism during the two thirds of a century 
covered by the present chapter. In New Eng- 
land alone the number of its churches had 
been increased to about five hundred. The 
period began and ended with the founding of a 
Christian college — that of Yale in 1700, and 
that of Dartmouth in 1769. Our polity had 
been, in some important respects, defined and 
developed. It had been vindicated by discus- 
sion and approved by experience. It had con- 
nected itself closely with the great ideas of the 
age. It both fostered and was fostered by that 
spirit of independence, and that sense of indi- 
vidual right and responsibility, which culmi- 
nated in 1776. It had successfully resisted the 
encroachments of English prelacy, as it was 
preparing to resist those of English royalty; 
and the pretensions of the two in America 
were about to fall together. It had repudiated 

1 Thompson's Times of Refreshing, p. 64. 



106 Close of the Colonial Period. 

New English Consociationism, in its offensive 
form, as a system incompatible not only with 
the traditions of Congregationalism, but with 
the spirit of the age. Thus overcoming dan- 
gerous tendencies within, and repelling insidi- 
ous enemies from without, it approached the 
new era which was about to dawn upon 
America. 



CHAPTER IX. 

EASTERN CONGREGATIONALISM AFTER THE 
WAR. 

The revolutionary period was one of spiritual 
decline. Multitudes of young men were in the 
army, where they suffered from the demoralizing 
influence of camp-life. Churches were more or 
less disorganized by the absence of pastors and 
members. Houses of worship were destroyed 
or used as barracks or hospitals. The people 
were burdened with taxation and poverty and 
kept in perpetual suspense and alarm. And 
worst of all, the seeds of infidelity were widely 
sown, and in some quarters proved too fatally 
fruitful, through the influence of French scep- 
tics and their American disciples. 

Yet the churches throughout this trying 
period made considerable progress, increasing 
their number and their membership, and as soon 
as peace was declared entered with energy upon 
the work of restoration. Their condition in the 



108 Maine. — New Hampshire. 



succeeding half-century will be better under- 
stood by a brief review of denominational his- 
tory in the several States than by any attempt 
at generalization. The length of time covered 
by our review can not in all cases be limited by 
exactly the same dates ; and an occasional glance 
backward or forward will be necessary. 

Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, and one 
of her special missionary fields, made greater 
proportionate gains than the Mother State. She 
had been terribly scourged during the Indian 
wars, and at one time seemed likely to be turned 
again into a wilderness. But the last years of 
the eighteenth century and the early part of 
the nineteenth brought her large emigration 
and great activity in church organization. In 
1790 she had between forty and fifty Congrega- 
tional churches ; in 1800, between sixty and 
seventy ; and in 1820, when she became a state, 
about 113. Bowdoin College was founded in 
1794, and Bangor Theological Seminary in 
1816. 

New Hampshire, although it had been a sep- 
arate province for almost a hundred years before 
the Revolution, had during a considerable part 



Vermont. 109 

of that time made little progress in population 
or in Christian enterprise. The two or three 
decades immediately preceding the war had 
been marked by greater activity. The General 
Convention of Ministers had been formed in 
1747, with seventeen members, and under its 
auspices, in 1769, Dartmouth College had been 
founded. After the war, growth was more 
rapid. In 1809 the Convention was supplanted 
by the General Association, which comprised 
eight local associations and ninety ministers. 
In 1835 New Hampshire had 170 Congrega- 
tional churches, with a membership of over 20,- 
000, or nearly eight per cent, of the entire popu- 
lation of the State. The Phillips Academy at 
Exeter was founded in 1781, and the Kimball 
Union Academy in 1814, both of theni*the fruit 
of Congregational zeal for education, and each 
of them the fruitful mother of ministers and 
missionaries. 

Vermont was the latest portion of New Eng- 
land to be settled ; and its first inhabitants were 
for the most part emigrants from the older 
colonies, to which it somewhat suddenly became 
the Great Northwest. A Separatist Congrega- 



110 Massachusetts. 

tional church was organized at Bennington in 
1762 ; and others followed in rapid succession as 
population increased, until they numbered 
seventy-four in 1800, and over two hundred in 
1830. The General Convention of Congrega- 
tional Ministers and Churches was organized in 
1796. The Vermont Congregationalists, like 
their brethren in other states, early gave their 
attention to the establishment of institutions of 
learning. Middlebury College and Vermont 
University, both opened about 1800, though 
chartered as undenominational institutions, were 
founded mainly through the efforts of Congre- 
gationalists, and most of their presidents and 
professors have been of that faith. 

In Massachusetts the post-revolutionary period 
was not so remarkable for denominational 
growth as for zeal in works of Christian benefi- 
cence. The Williamstown free school became 
Williams College in 1793, and the Amherst 
Academy became Amherst College in 1821 ; so 
urgent was the demand for increased educa- 
tional facilities, especially on the part of the 
candidates for the ministry. The lapse of 
Harvard College from orthodoxy, which had 



Rhode Island. Ill 

much to do with the Amherst movement, led 
also to the founding, in 1807, of the Andover 
Theological Seminary, which soon became rec- 
ognized as the bulwark of evangelical faith. 
In 1802 the General Association of Massa- 
chusetts Ministers was formed, despite the fears 
of the orthodox that it would tend to the 
abridgment of Congregational freedom, and the 
suspicion of the unorthodox that it would 
attempt dictation of creeds and opinions. It 
comprised twenty-four local associations and 235 
ministers, and not only proved itself highly 
serviceable to the churches, but led the way to 
the perfecting of their ecclesiastical organi- 
zation. 

The first settlers in Rhode Island, as we 
have already seen, were Baptist and Antino- 
mian refugees from Massachusetts ; and it was 
long before Congregationalism gained any per- 
manent footing there. The first Congrega- 
tional church in Newport, organized about 
1639, had, with its pastor, turned Baptist. In 
its place, 1720 and 1728, two others sprang up, 
whose pastors at the beginning of the epoch of 
which we are now speaking were men of rare 



112 Connecticut. 

ability and distinction : Samuel Hopkins, the 
great theologian, and Ezra Styles, called from 
his Newport pastorate in 1777 to the presidency 
of Yale College. The first church in Provi- 
dence dates from 1720; but after a long and 
honorable career of Orthodoxy it went over to 
Unitarianism, leaving the Beneficent Church, 
formed by secession in 1743, to become the 
true mother of Congregationalism in that city. 
Other churches were formed at various impor- 
tant points in the State. Yet the total number 
was but ten in 1790, and averaged about the 
same for forty years thereafter. The Evangeli- 
cal Consociation was formed in 1808, succeeded 
in due time by the Rhode Island Congrega- 
tional Conference. It may be added that since 
1830 Congregationalism has made much more 
rapid progress in the State, not only gaining 
steadily, but increasing its rate of growth to an 
extent scarcely surpassed in any portion of 
New England. 

In Connecticut, Congregationalism presented, 
from the first, great vitality and force. During 
the colonial period it was the established reli- 
gion; under the republic, it continued to enjoy 



Tale College. 113 

the advantage secured by its ancient prestige 
and its general acceptance with the people. In 
1800 it numbered more than two hundred 
churches; and it continued from year to year 
to enlarge its membership and its sphere of 
usefulness. The Consociational system re- 
mained in force, but was considerably modified 
and Congregationalized. There were ministers 
and churches, moreover, that dissented from 
the principles of the Saybrook Platform. A 
body of such dissentients organized what was 
called "The Strict Congregational Convention 
of Connecticut," which undertook missionary 
work, and formed " Strict Congregational " 
churches. 

Yale College was still the child of poverty 
and affliction. Rebellions within and opposi- 
tion without had beset it from the beginning. 
In 1777 President Daggett resigned, and the 
classes were scattered in three different towns 
in search of bread and tuition. The adminis- 
tration of President Styles did much to raise 
the college to a position of dignity and effi- 
ciency ; yet at the inauguration of President 
Dwight, in 1795, there were, besides himself, 



114 The Middle States. 

but one professor and three tutors. From this 
time, however, the college gained strength, 
means, and reputation, and became the pride of 
the state. President D wight's noted triumph 
over the rising spirit of infidelity in the institu- 
tion, followed by the great revival of 1802, 
made his administration a memorable epoch in 
the history, not only of Yale College, but of 
religious opinion throughout our country. In 
1824 the department of theological instruc- 
tion, alwaj^s an important one in the college, 
was constituted a distinct School of Divinity. 
In the Middle States, Congregationalism, 
carried there by New England emigration, 
made not a little progress. The churches 
established on Long Island by the Strict Con- 
gregational Convention of Connecticut formed, 
in 1791, a similar convention of their own. 
They enjoyed revivals and other signs of spir- 
itual prosperity, and manifested for a time con- 
siderable organized force. In Southern New 
York, and in the region bordering on New 
England, the churches formed were almost 
exclusively Congregational ; and some, which 
were originally Presbyterian, found it expe- 



The Middle States. 115 

dient to reorganize on a Congregational basis. 
In Central and Western New York, the 
principal missionary field of the Eastern 
churches, Congregationalism was equally prev- 
alent. Local ecclesiastical associations were 
indeed formed under the name of Associated 
Presbyteries ; but they were strictly Congrega- 
tional or Independent bodies. In New Jersey, 
although Presbyterianism had acquired a pre- 
ponderating influence, a Congregational rem- 
nant still preserved its polity and its vigor. 
"The Associated Presbytery of Morris Coun- 
ty " was organized in 1780, as a testimony of 
its Congregational members against the pre- 
vailing system. " We think," said they to 
their brethren, "you have such notions of 
Presbyterial power and church government as 
are not agreeable to our free institutions." 
Pennsylvania was largely indebted to New 
England for both population and evangeliza- 
tion. In the Wyoming Valley, of tragic mem- 
ory, and in many other parts of the state, 
Puritan settlements abounded, and Puritan 
institutions were to be found, including a large 
number of Congregational churches. But the 



116 The South. 

patriotism of the Congregational is ts exposed 
them during the Revolution to the hatred and 
persecution of the Tories by whom they were 
surrounded; and the close of the war found 
them impoverished and scattered. Neverthe- 
less, they reorganized their church work, and 
won for themselves a good report by their 
thrift, morality, and beneficence. 

At the South our polity found but scanty 
encouragement, and was scarcely found at all 
outside of the New England settlements. In 
North and South Carolina, Congregational 
churches were organized in the seventeenth 
century, and missionary, Sunday-school, and 
philanthropic work was vigorously pursued. 
The Congregational Association of South 
Carolina was formed in 1802. In the Midway 
District, Ga., was a Congregational settlement 
famous in history. Its staunch patriotism ; 
its sufferings in the cause of liberty ; its efforts 
for the education and Christianization of the 
slaves, abundantly justified the name of 
"Liberty County." But the time had not yet 
come when Congregationalism was to thrive 
at the South. We must still seek the principal 



Controversies. 117 

outlines of its history in New England, to 
which we now return. 

Two controversies there waged during this 
period affected the character and destiny of 
American Congregationalism : one concerning 
our polity ; the other concerning the most vital 
articles of our faith. The ideas which found 
expression in the " Proposals " of 1705, and in 
the Saybrook Platform in 1808, and which were 
embodied in original Consociationism, still pos- 
sessed the minds of many of the ministers. At 
the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Asso- 
ciation in 1814, resolutions were introduced 
looking to the reorganization of the body on 
the basis of the " Proposals," the original draft 
of which had been dug up for the occasion. 
The association postponed the subject for a 
year, and then left it to the ministers and 
churches of the local bodies to do what they 
saw fit respecting it. But the change was no- 
where made. The drift of general opinion was 
toward a broader and not toward a narrower 
Congregationalism. A powerful advocate of a 
pure Congregational polity was found in Dr. 
Nathaniel Emmons, of Franklin, Mass., that 



118 The Unitarian Controversy. 

master of irrefutable logic. He maintained that 
Congregationalism was instituted by Christ him- 
self; that its form is that of a pure democracy, 
and that there is no ecclesiastical authority 
higher than that of the local church, excepting 
only the authority of Christ its Head. So able 
and influential was his advocacy of these views, 
and so completely have they been adopted by 
the denomination, that he has been called " the 
Second Father of Congregationalism." 1 

The Unitarian controversy was the great 
theological struggle of the period now under re- 
view ; though it was almost entirely limited to 
New England, and indeed chiefly to Massachu- 
setts. Its causes had been ripening for half a 
century before the actual conflict came ; and 
warnings had been loudly uttered by such men 
as Edwards, Hopkins, and Bellamy. Little by 
little Unitarianism infected individual minds, 
and made its impression upon the public. Many 
of the younger ministers adopted its specious 
doctrines ; and multitudes of formal professors 
and graceless non-professors hailed it as the 
gospel of comfortable worldliness. So influential 

1 Dr. Dexter. 



The Unitarian Controversy. 119 

did it become in social and political circles that 
when the crisis came, although more than three 
fourths of the members of the Massachusetts 
churches remained orthodox, the other fourth 
was able to control the governor, the legisla- 
ture, and the courts in the interest of Unitarian- 
ism. Through the adroit management of their 
friends they captured Harvard College, and for 
some time prevented the incorporation of Am- 
herst, its orthodox rival. Under the decision 
of Chief Justice Parker, that a church has no 
legal status apart from the parish, eighty-one 
churches in Massachusetts lost their houses of 
worship, their furniture, their records, and their 
very names. Thus 1,300 Unitarians dispossessed 
3,900 orthodox Congregationalists of property 
to the value of more than $600,000. x Among 
these churches were the old Mayflower Church 
at Plymouth, and every Congregational church 
in Boston excepting the Old South. In Con- 
necticut, though Unitarianism had some ardent 
champions, it gained but one church. Never- 
theless, the controversy proved of incalculable 
advantage to our denomination. It freed the 

1 Dexter's Congregationalism as Seen in its Literature, p. 619. 



120 The Unitarian Controversy, 

churches of an element which it was death to 
retain, and impossible otherwise to cast out. It 
denned the doctrinal basis of Congregationalism; 
it called forth masterpieces of theological dis- 
sertation ; it stimulated the pulpit ; it set the 
people to thinking upon the greatest of all 
themes ; it revealed the impregnable strength 
of evangelical truth ; it occasioned the founding 
of Amherst College and of Andover Seminary ; 
it gave an impulse to the churches under which 
they recovered their losses over and over. New 
churches were organized, old ones were quick- 
ened, and an epoch of revivals and missionary 
effort was brought in. 

But while the orthodox churches thus exhib- 
ited a life which no adversity or opposition 
could destroy, their adversaries found them- 
selves without one strong organizing or vital- 
izing principle. When the active conflict was 
over, the Unitarian church members in Massa- 
chusetts were to the orthodox as one to ten. 

Some important items belonging to this 
period of our history must be reserved for 
a subsequent chapter. Those already given 
show that New England Congregationalism 



The Unitarian Controversy. 121 

was making progress, becoming more conscious 
of itself, clearer in its convictions, more compact 
in its organization, more self-reliant, aggressive, 
and evangelistic. If its career in New England 
could have repeated itself in the regions to 
which it was now beginning to extend its 
influence, a far different task would have 
devolved upon the writer of its history. 



CHAPTER X. 

GAINS AND LOSSES. 

Missionaey enterprise was ever one of 
the strongest evidences of vitality presented by 
Congregationalism. The evangelization of the 
Indians was a prominent object in the settlement 
of the country; and had been pursued with 
considerable constancy and some success, not- 
withstanding the antagonisms which war had 
raised between the two races. The Society for 
Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and 
others in North America was formed in 1787. 
As emigration from old settlements to new 
took place, the missionary spirit of our fathers 
prompted them to follow the settlers with the 
gospel and the church. 

In 1788 the Connecticut churches adopted 
the plan of sending out their own pastors for 
brief terms of missionary service on the frontier 
— Central New York, for instance. Much ad- 
mirable work was done in this way, but the 



Missionary Organizations. 123 

plan could not be permanently practicable. In 
1798 the General Association organized itself 
into the Connecticut Missionary Society, and 
four years later was duly incorporated as such. 
The work which this noble organization accom- 
plished for evangelical religion in this country 
is beyond computation, though the very excess 
of its zeal for the cause led to the adoption of 
that specious Plan of Union, whose results were 
so disastrous to Congregationalism. The Berk- 
shire (Mass.) and Columbia (N. Y.) Missionary 
Society was organized in 1798, and the Hamp- 
shire (Mass.) Missionary Society in 1802 ; the 
Massachusetts Missionary Society in 1799 ; the 
New Hampshire Missionary Society in 1801 ; 
the Maine Missionary Society in 1807 ; the 
Vermont Domestic Missionary Society in 1818 ; 
the Domestic Missionary Society of Massachu- 
setts in 1818. The objects of most of these 
organizations were such as were stated in the 
Constitution of the Massachusetts Missionary 
Society: "To diffuse the Gospel among the 
heathen [Indians], as well as other people in 
the remote parts of our country where Christ 
is seldom or never preached." 



124 Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. 

Another group of missionary organizations fol- 
lowed, having more comprehensive plans, and 
destined to wield a mighty influence among the 
evangelizing agencies of the world : the Ameri- 
can Board in 1810 ; the American Tract Society 
in 1814; the American Education Society in 
1816 ; the Massachusetts Sunday-school Union 
in 1825, and the American Home Missionary 
Society in 1826. The zeal for the salvation of 
men which led to this extraordinary missionary 
activity was one of the finest fruits of that 
quickened spiritual life which marked the great 
revival epoch beginning with the last decade of 
the eighteenth century, and making the early 
years of the nineteenth a continuous Pentecost. 

The relation of Presbyterianism to Congrega- 
tionalism in this country is an item of our his- 
tory which now comes prominently into view. 
We have seen the influence which Presby- 
terianism exerted upon our churches through 
their fraternal relations with the Reformed 
Churches of Holland and Great Britain. We 
have traced the operation in our own system of 
such Presbyterian elements as the eldership, 
Consociationism, etc. Many of the pastors were 



Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. 125 

men of Presbyterian antecedents or preferences, 
though the churches, almost without exception, 
were Congregational. There was no prejudice 
against Presbyterian terms. Congregational 
associations were called presbyteries ; Congrega- 
tional councils, conferences, conventions, were 
called synods. 

In 1706 a presbytery was formed at Phila- 
delphia, a majority of its members being Con- 
gregationalists. Other similarly constituted 
bodies followed from time to time ; and finally 
the Synod of Philadelphia was constituted. 
Yet these bodies had no formal constitution, 
creed, or discipline, and differed from the Con- 
necticut Consociations only in being more 
Congregational than they. But they were parts 
of a system which soon took on definite ecclesi- 
astical form in this country, and which made 
them the nucleus of a denomination. Congre- 
gational churches were numerous and flourish- 
ing throughout the settled portions of the 
Middle Colonies. But they were scattered; 
they felt the need of fellowship ; they had no 
general plan of organization of their own; 
they were in doctrinal affinity with the Presby- 



126 Congregationalism and Presbyterianism, 

terians, and they joined the presbyteries. 
Presbyterianism had its plan and its organi 
zation. Year by year that plan developed 
itself, and the Congregational churches found 
themselves apart of it. For the most part they 
accepted it without reluctance. Some of them 
rebelled, and formed Congregational bodies, still 
calling them presbyteries. All this was in the 
eighteenth century, and most of it before the 
war. 

After the war, when the tide of emigration 
from New England poured into New York and 
Pennsylvania, followed step by step by the 
evangelizing efforts of the New England mission- 
aries, Congregational churches were planted all 
over those regions, and were to some extent 
gathered into local associations. The associa- 
tions sustained friendly relations with presby- 
teries in their neighborhood, interchanging 
delegates with them under a system of fellow- 
ship which gave the delegates standing as 
honorary members of the bodies visited by 
them. Closer relations were established, and 
closer and closer, until, somehow, the associa- 
tions found themselves converted into presby- 
teries. 



The "Plan of Union." 127 

The Plan of Union was an arrangement be- 
tween the Connecticut Missiouary Society and 
the Presbyterians, in 1801, for cooperation in 
missionary effort. It was undertaken in a spirit 
eminently fraternal and Christian. The two 
denominations ostensibly merged their differ- 
ences in the common work. Really, Congrega- 
tionalism was merged in Presbyterianism. By 
favor of these advantages, what had taken place 
in New Jerse} r , in the eighteenth century, was 
the more easily accomplished in New York and 
Pennsylvania in the nineteenth. 

But while the Middle States were thus almost 
completely Presbyterianized, New England grew 
more strongly and consistently Congregational. 
The issue between the two systems seems to 
have been decided upon the principle of the 
survival of the strongest. Where Congregation- 
alism was thoroughly organized and united, and 
was working out a definite plan of its own, it 
grew stronger and stronger. Where it was in 
a formative and dependent state, it yielded to 
the most positive ecclesiastical force in its 
neighborhood. 

It is absurd to blame the Presbyterian Church 



128 The Northwestern Territory, 

for its triumph over the Congregationalism of 
the Middle States. Presbyterians love their 
system, believe in its superiority, and act ac- 
cordingly. But in this country ecclesiastical 
conquests are not achieved except by the con- 
sent of the conquered party. If Presbyterianism 
has secured any part of our birthright, it is be- 
cause we have surrendered it. The fault was 
not that they loved their polity too well, but 
that we did not love ours enough. 

The Northwestern Territory, created by the 
ordinance of 1787, and embracing what is now 
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wiscon- 
sin, early attracted New England emigrants and 
became the scene of new gains and losses to 
Congregationalism. The Ohio settlements be- 
gan at Marietta, where a colony from Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut established itself in 1788, 
organized a Congregational church, and estab- 
lished a school which forty years afterward 
became Marietta College. A number of kin- 
dred settlements were made in that part of 
Ohio. On the Western Reserve, New England 
colonies and institutions were also planted, in- 
cluding Western Reserve College, founded in 



Indiana. ■ — Michigan. — Illinois. 129 

1826. The Oberlin settlement and College 
were established by New England Congrega- 
tionalists in 1833. In Southern Ohio the 
immigration was chiefly from the Middle and 
Southern States, and was chiefly affiliated with 
Presbyterianism. 

Indiana was first settled by some unthrifty 
Virginia emigrants. From 1804 to 1810 it was 
a slave state. New England missionaries ex- 
plored the field in 1812, and began to labor in 
it, under the Plan of Union, of course, in 1816, 
but with very little success or encouragement. 

Michigan received a large influx of settlers 
from New England and New York. The Rev. 
David Bacon was sent out by the Connecticut 
Missionary Society in 1800, to labor among the 
Indians. Home-missionary work proper did not 
begin till twenty years later. The first Congre- 
gational church was formed at Rochester in 

1827. Others followed at an encouraging rate, 
till in 1840 they numbered more than thirty. 

Home-missionary work in Illinois began in 
1814, under Congregational auspices. The 
territory, which did not become a state until 
four years later, was already filling with people 



130 Wisconsin. 

at the rate of thousands in a year, but was 
deplorably destitute of the gospel. It was one 
of the fields visited and brought to the attention 
of Eastern Christians by that Livingstone of 
home-missionary exploration, Samuel J. Mills. 
The New England missionary societies at once 
sent out laborers ; and later the work was taken 
up by the American Home Missionary Society. 
But though most of the means and the men for 
this work were furnished by Congregationalism, 
every church organized by the missionaries, for 
twenty years, was Presbyterian. The First 
Presbyterian Church of Chicago was formed of 
Congregational members exclusively; so abso- 
lutely had Congregationalists been convinced 
that their polity would not work on the frontier. 
The first Congregational church in the state 
was imported, ready-made, — the Princeton 
church, — organized at Northampton, Mass., in 
1831, and migrating in a body. In 1833 others 
began to be formed on the field, including one 
at Jacksonville, where Illinois College was 
founded in 1835. 

Wisconsin was the most remote and for a long 
time the least-esteemed portion of the North- 



Wisconsin, 131 

western Territory. Emigration reached it tar- 
dily, and evangelization more tardily yet. The 
first church of our faith was the Indian church 
at Statesburgh ; the first one composed of white 
persons was that of Waukesha, in 1838. Yet 
the very lateness of the arrival of Congregation- 
alism in the state was favorable to its growth, 
since it had then reached years of discretion 
concerning its own capacities and vocation. It 
suffered fewer embarrassments and achieved 
greater success in Wisconsin than in many of 
the older regions of the West. Its relation to 
Presbyterianism was so wisely and equitably 
managed as to be continued without embarrass- 
ment or loss of denominational dignity. 

On the whole, the frontier work in the Ohio 
and Mississippi valleys, under the auspices of 
the noble missionary organizations of the East, 
was grandly done. It did little for Congrega- 
tionalism, but very much for the gospel. The 
Plan of Union, adopted in the spirit of Christian 
fraternity, really promoted the sectarianism 
which it sought to avoid. To Congregation- 
alists evangelism was everything ; the propaga- 
tion of a polity nothing. With Presbyterians 



132 Home Missions and Congregationalism, 

the former was to be done, but the latter was 
not to be left undone. Each preferred his own 
system. The Presbyterian took care of his; 
the Congregationalist left his to take care of 
itself. Hence, under the Plan of Union, it 
became the chief privilege of Congregational 
missionaries to build up Presbyterianism at 
the West. 

The American Home Missionary Society was 
formed in 1826, and to it the state and local 
societies, one by one, gave up their cherished 
work. It was organized upon a plan of union 
more comprehensive than that of 1801, em- 
bracing Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed 
Dutch, and Associate Reformed churches. The 
work at the West was prosecuted with greater 
energy than before, but with the same result so 
far as Congregationalism was concerned. The 
opinion still prevailed, as expressed to the 
Rev. Mr. Pierce by the local Home Missionary 
Committee at Detroit in 1831, " that, while 
Congregationalism did well enough for New 
England, it was not adapted to the recent 
settlements of the West." Migrating Con- 
gregationalists were advised by their pastors 



Home Missions and Congregationalism. 133 

to join Presbyterian churches ; Congregational 
home missionaries were advised to join the 
presbyteries. In most cases the advice was 
followed. 

Thus Congregationalism, outnumbered in 
Southern Ohio and Indiana; outgeneraled on 
the Western Reserve ; ostracized in Illinois ; 
accused of lax theology, or of none at all; 
abandoned by its friends as impotent and im- 
practicable, yielded the field to the more self- 
reliant system, and presented to Presbyterianism 
two thousand churches in the Middle and West- 
ern States. It was a magnificent bequest, and 
fairly entitles us to a special interest in the good 
work which those churches have accomplished 
in their separate capacity, as well as to our 
share of the triumphs which were achieved by 
them and ourselves conjointly. Whatever 
may have been the result to us as a denomina- 
tion, the joy, the privilege, and the fruits of 
those years of missionary labor can not be 
taken from us. 

In the foreign-missionary field also, and in 
the Bible, the Sunday-school, the Tract, and the 
Temperance Societies, the two denominations 



134 Manifold Gains. 

labored harmoniously together and without 
danger of any such sectarian encroachments as 
the home-missionary work involved. 

The denominational eclipse was by no means 
total. The churches were blessed with revivals 
of great power, especially during the years 1800 
to 1804, 1820 to 1823, 1826, 1827, and 1830 to 
1832. The period embraced the wonderful 
evangelistic career of the Rev. Asahel Nettleton, 
and the first ten years of the labors of Mr. 
Finney. It presents us a roll of Congregational 
preachers and theologians of which no denomi- 
nation need be ashamed — Nathan Strong, 
Charles Backus, Samuel Spring, Timothy 
Dwight, Ebenezer Porter, Leonard Woods, 
Moses Stuart, Edward Payson, Justin Ed- 
wards, Lyman Beecher, Edward D. Griffin, 
and scores of others. It saw the founding of 
five Congregational theological seminaries : 
Andover, Bangor, New Haven, Hartford, 
Oberlin : and of eight colleges, established 
wholly or chiefly by Congregationalists. 

A spirit of liberality pervaded the churches. 
Of all that was contributed to found institutions 
of learning, East and West, and to carry on 



Manifold Grains. 135 

missionary work, at home and abroad, a very 
large share was given by New England Congre- 
gationalists. 

But the period of eclipse was drawing to a 
close. Already the causes were in operation 
which were to restore Congregationalism to its 
proper sphere and work, and bring in a new 
epoch in its history. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE RENAISSANCE OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 

Signs of recovery from denominational mis- 
fortune have already appeared in our history. 
A decline had never occurred. Congregation- 
alism had never been other than a vigorous and 
productive system. Its losses were due to no 
lack of vitality in itself, but to the appropri- 
ation of its fruits by others. These appropri- 
ations now began to be checked. Experience 
had proved that the Plan of Union lacked 
the essentials of an equitable bargain; it was 
advantageous to one party only. A more thor- 
ough study of Ecclesiology revealed to Congre- 
gationalists the strength of their position, 
scripturally and historically, and gave them 
more respect for their system. Their experience 
with it in New England encouraged them to 
trust it elsewhere. Its success as an evangel- 
izing agency was a reason for making it an 
organizing agency as well. Some Congrega- 



Strength through Organization. 137 

tional pioneers, like the Rev. Mr. Pierce, of 
Michigan, repudiated the theory of limited 
adaptability, and disproved it by experiment, 
organizing and perpetuating Congregational 
churches on the frontier, and uniting them in 
associations. 

With organization came strength. The new 
era of Congregationalism in New York began 
with the formation of the State Association in 
1834. From 104 churches it has grown, in less 
than fifty years, to 256 churches with 35,500 
members. 1 New Jersey, where Congregation- 
alism, thirty years ago, was almost extinct, has 
twenty-five churches and 3,300 members. Penn- 
sylvania has eighty churches and 6,400 members. 
In Michigan, though other causes contributed 
to the result, the organization of the General 
Association, in 1842, brought to the scattered 
churches courage and strength. In Ohio, where 
cliques and factions had made Congregation- 
alism an undeniable rope of sand, the formation 
of the State Conference, in 1852, introduced an 
era of unity and progress. 

Presbyterian action tended still further to 

i Year-book, 1885. 



138 Strength through Organization. 

promote Congregational independence. Some- 
times on theological grounds, and sometimes on 
political, the Presbyterians began to withdraw 
from their alliances with us. The excision of 
forty-two members of the First Presbyterian 
Church of Chicago in 1851, because of their 
attitude toward a pro-slavery General Assembly, 
led to the formation of the First Congregational 
Church of that city, and to the re-creation of 
the denomination throughout the state. 

The Presbyterian and Congregational Con- 
vention of Wisconsin, organized in 1840, was 
the Plan of Union with modern improvements, 
another " middle- way," aiming to secure to each 
church the polity of its choice, and to all the 
benefits of union and cooperation. The plan 
has been operated in good faith, and with much 
harmony ; but the withdrawal of almost all of 
the Presbyterian churches long ago left the 
Convention chiefly to the Congregationalists, 
who have now nearly two hundred churches. 
Beloit College, one of the best collegiate insti- 
tutions in the West, was founded in 1847, and 
Ripon College in 1863. 

West of the Mississippi, Congregational his- 



Missouri and Iowa. — The Iowa Band. 139 

tory belongs chiefly to the period of the 
renaissance. Missouri had been visited by 
Mr. Mills in 1812, and had been occupied by 
New England missionaries in 1814. But the 
permanent establishment of Congregationalism 
in the state dates from the organization of the 
First Congregational Church of St. Louis, under 
the Rev. Truman Post, in 1852. Our seventy- 
four churches now have five thousand members, 
and apparently an open door of usefulness 
which no man can shut. Drury College was 
founded in 1873. 

Home-missionary labor in Iowa was begun 
by the Rev. C. L. Watson in 1835. The First 
Congregational Church was organized at Den- 
mark in 1838. At the same place the General 
Association was founded in 1840 ; and there in 
1843 occurred the most notable event in the 
early religious history of Iowa — the ordination 
of nine young men, seven of them members of 
the " Iowa Band " of home missionaries. This 
historic Band originally comprised twelve mem- 
bers of the class of 1843 in Andover Theologi- 
cal Seminary. Eleven of the number engaged 
in home - missionary work in Iowa: Ephraim 



140 The Iowa Band, 

and Harvey Adams, Ebenezer Alden, Horace 
Hutchinson, Daniel Lane, A. B. Robbins, 
William Salter, B. A. Spaulding, E. B. 
Turner, J. J. Hill, and Erastus Ripley. Other 
faithful laborers, preceding, accompanying, or 
following the Band, cooperated with them in 
the work of evangelizing the new territory. 
Though entering their field for no sectarian 
purpose, and some of them with no fixed 
denominational bias, and holding no consul- 
tations upon the subject, these early mission- 
aries were led to adopt and promote the Con- 
gregational polity ; and it was through their 
influence that Iowa Congregationalism so 
early became a strong and aggressive force. 
Through their efforts and sacrifices, with some 
temporary aid from Presbyterian brethren, 
Iowa College was founded in 1847. Seven 
years later Tabor College, also a child of 
Congregationalism, was established. Iowa 
now (1884) contains 260 Congregational 
churches — more than any other state in the 
Union, excepting Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and Michigan. 

Minnesota was a missionary field of the 



Minnesota. 141 

American Board from 1835, and of the Ameri- 
can Home Missionary Society from 1854. The 
Rev. Charles Seccombe organized a Congrega- 
tional church at St. Anthony (East Minneapo- 
lis) in 1851, and the Rev. Richard Hall one at 
Point Douglas in 1852. The next six years 
increased the number to thirty, and subse- 
quent years witnessed still more rapid prog- 
ress. A large proportion of the native Ameri- 
can inhabitants of Minnesota have been from 
New England ; and New England ideas and 
institutions, including Congregationalism, have 
found a congenial home in the state. The 
leading men of the denomination have been 
enthusiastic in promoting the Pilgrim polity, 
judicious in the organization of new churches, 
and generous in the support of feeble ones. 
Besides the State Association, organized in 
1853, and a full quota of local Conferences, 
there is a Congregational Club, composed of 
over one hundred prominent ministers and 
laymen, whose influence has done much to 
promote esprit de corps, and to foster every 
worthy denominational interest. Carleton 
College was established under the auspices 



142 Kansas and Nebraska. 

of the State Conference in 1867, and though 
strictly undenominational, has ever been 
generously cherished by the Congregational 
churches. 

Kansas was entered by Congregationalism in 
1854, when the great struggle between the pro- 
slavery and the anti-slavery parties was impend- 
ing. Of course, the sympathies of the denom- 
ination were with the party of freedom ; and it 
made itself felt on that side to good purpose. 
Its influence was one of the strong forces which 
redeemed the state ; though it was compelled 
to act the part of the Church Militant with 
considerable vigor. Church organization pros- 
pered slowly during those turbulent years, 
which had hardly passed when the Civil War 
exposed Kansas to the incursions of fresh hordes 
of border ruffians. Yet the churches formed 
their State Association in 1856; and under its 
auspices was founded Lincoln, afterward Wash- 
burn, College in 1865. Excepting Iowa, Kan- 
sas has now more Congregational churches than 
any other state west of the Mississippi River. 

Nebraska shared with Kansas its early politi- 
cal vicissitudes ; though the longer postpone- 



The Pacific Coast. 143 

ment of emigration saved it from the fiery 
ordeal passed through by its southern neighbor. 
The Rev. Reuben Gaylord, one of the pioneers 
in home-missionary work in Iowa, began similar 
labors in Nebraska in 1855, even in advance of 
instructions from the Home Missionary Society. 
A church was formed through his instrumen- 
tality at Omaha in 1856, and a number of others 
during the two or three years that followed. 
Nebraska has experienced great fluctuations in 
the volume of emigration, and her Congrega- 
tional history shows corresponding contrasts of 
light and shade. For the last twenty years, 
however, it has made astonishing progress. The 
denominational statistics for 1884 make it sixth 
in the number of Congregational churches 
among the states west of the Mississippi. The 
General Association was formed in 1867 ; and 
Doane College was founded in 1872. 

The Pacific coast was reached by Congrega- 
tionalism sooner than many nearer and more 
accessible parts of the country. Ministers and 
laymen of that faith were among the early emi- 
grants to California. The first Congregational 
church in that state was formed in 1849. The 



144 The Pacific Coast. 

General Association was organized in 1852. In 
1853, through the united efforts of the Congre- 
gationalists and the Presbyterians, the school of 
learning was established which ultimately be- 
came the University of California. The Pacific 
Theological Seminary was opened at Oakland 
in 1869. 

Oregon, like several other states and terri- 
tories, was a foreign-missionary field before it 
was a home-missionary one. The Rev. Samuel 
Parker and Dr. Marcus Whitman began their 
labors among the Indians in 1836. When, 
through the conspiracy of the Jesuits and the 
Hudson Bay Company, our government was on 
the point of ceding the territory to Great 
Britain, Dr. Whitman went to Washington, 
convinced the authorities of the importance of 
retaining possession, prevented the consumma- 
tion of the transfer, and . on his way back, in 
1843, proved the accessibility of the Territory 
by leading a wagon-train of emigrants over the 
Rocky Mountains. The story of this heroic 
achievement, and of the cruel massacre of Dr. 
Whitman and his family and associates by 
Indians, in 1847, is familiar to the readers of 



The New West. 145 

current missionary literature. The Congrega- 
tional home missionaries, Harvey Clarke and 
J. S. Griffin, began their labors in Oregon in 
1840, and the Rev. George H. Atkinson, the 
Congregational Bishop of Oregon, in 1848. 
Congregationalism has not made great progress 
in Oregon. It has had since 1848 its General 
Association, among whose good deeds have 
been the inauguration at an early day of what 
is now Pacific University, and the recent 
founding of Whitman College. 

Washington Territory, formerly a part of 
Oregon, is closely connected with it in ecclesi- 
astical history and organization. " The Congre- 
gational Association of Oregon and Washing- 
ton Territory" embraces twenty of the forty- 
two Washington Territory churches, with the 
twenty-one of Oregon. The remaining thirty- 
two constitute "The Congregational Associ- 
ation of Washington Territory." The Rev. 
Mr. Atkinson explored the field in 1859, but 
missionary work was not begun there until 
1870. 

The New West, occupying the immense area 
between the Pacific States and those of the 



146 The New West. 

Mississippi Valley, is the most recently occu- 
pied, though in some respects the most promis- 
ing, field of Congregational effort. Missionaries 
have been placed and churches have been 
organized at many of the more important 
points. The progress of the older fields 
toward self-support, and the rapid develop- 
ment of these newer regions, tend to concen- 
trate missionary effort more and more every 
year upon this vast empire, with whose manifold 
heathenisms the gospel must long have a 
terrible conflict. The Indian, the Chinaman, 
the Mormon, the European emigrant, the 
universal ruffian, are some of the classes 
whose presence demands the utmost that 
Christianity can do. The Home Missionary 
Society is constantly increasing its forces, 
and is pushing its own work in every legiti- 
mate way. The New West Education Com- 
mission, organized in 1879, with special 
reference to this field, to do what no other 
existing society could do, is accomplishing 
vast good through the agency of Christian 
education. It is impossible to follow these 
efforts in detail ; and happily the exigencies 



The New West. 147 

of the work, and the general interest of our 
churches in it, have made it more familiar to 
intelligent Congregationalists than almost any 
other field of Christian effort. As to statistics, 
it would be idle to present them where the 
figures would need to be revised every week. 

Dakota, filling with settlers by the hundreds 
of thousands, and likely soon to add two vast 
states to the Union, belongs rather to the 
Mississippi Valley region than to the New 
West. It presents a grand field for Congrega- 
tionalism, and our work has been vigorously 
pushed in both the southern and the northern 
parts of the territory. The latest statistics 
at hand (1884) report 110 churches and 2,871 
members. Yankton College testifies to the 
zeal of Congregationalists for Christian edu- 
cation. 

Colorado has its twenty-eight churches, with 
nearly fifteen hundred members. Colorado 
College is largely a Congregational enterprise, 
and one in which the denomination may well 
take pride. While yet in the process of 
organizing its own immediate work, it had 
the courage to inaugurate that of Christian 



148 The New West and the South. 

academic education in Utah and in New 
Mexico. 

Utah is the very heart of the New West. 
The Home Missionary Society has made it a 
centre of operations in that field ; and since 
1881 has had a special superintendent there, 
the Rev. D. L. Leonard, with head-quarters at 
Salt Lake City. The New West Commission 
has made Utah its principal field, and is doing 
a work there, with which, Governor Murray 
declares, " not all the legislation of Congress 
hitherto, nor the millions of money spent in 
the ' Mormon War,' nor any other agency now 
operative, can compare in value for the 
elevation of Utah." 

Here and there, in Wyoming, Nevada, 
Montana, Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico, at 
mining-centres, and along the lines of railway, 
Congregational laborers are at work, every- 
where appalled by the greatness of the field, 
but encouraged by the fruits of their toil. 

In the South and Southwest, where, for 
manifest reasons, Congregationalism was nearly 
extinct at the close of the war, it has since 
then taken a prominent part in Christian work, 



American Missionary Association. 149 

especially in efforts for the elevation of the 
colored race. Our roll of churches in these 
states, excluding Missouri, is 121, with a mem- 
bership of nearly seven thousand. The Home 
Missionary" Society has entered the field at 
several important points, and is planning to ex- 
tend its labors there. The American Missionary 
Association has made the South its chief field 
of effort, and has accomplished more for the 
intellectual and moral welfare of the freedmen 
than any other agency has done. Among the 
higher institutions of learning, supported 
wholly or in part by this Society, are Berea 
College of Kentucky, Fisk University of 
Tennessee, Atlanta University of Georgia, 
Talladega College of Alabama, Tougaloo 
University of Mississippi, and Straight Uni- 
versity of New Orleans. In these institutions, 
academic, collegiate, normal, industrial, agricul- 
tural, and professional courses are pursued, 
while high-school and common-school work is 
carried on all over the South, and all in con- 
nection with earnest evangelical missionary 
effort. The present magnitude of this work 
appears from the fact that the Association last 



150 American Missionary Association, 

year (1883-84) expended upon it over $200,000, 
employing more than four hundred teachers and 
assistants ; while thousands of its graduates 
and under-graduates are laboring as preachers 
or teachers among their own people. 



CHAPTER XII. 
CURRENT DENOMINATIONAL ACTIVITIES. 

Our Benevolent Societies, whose work has 
met us at every point in our history, deserve 
separate mention as the great agencies of 
denominational activity. 

The Home Missionary Society, in which we 
were privileged so long to cooperate with our 
Presbyterian brethren in a partnership whose 
denominational benefits accrued chiefly to them, 
has been, since 1860, a Congregational organiza- 
tion. Its work has not declined since the change 
in its constituency, but is even more abundant 
and fruitful than ever, while the Presbyterians 
sustain their own with equal vigor. The two 
societies last year expended a million dollars 
on home-missionary work, a larger sum, and 
more wisely spent, no doubt, than if a union 
organization had managed it. The work which 
the American Home Missionary Society has 
done for the moral, the social, and even the 



152 Our Benevolent Societies. 

political well-being of thousands of com- 
munities has been of incalculable benefit to 
our country, and constitutes no small part of 
the Congregational Renaissance. 

The American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions was conceived and instituted 
by Congregation alists ; and after a long and 
splendid career as a union society, became in 
1870 Congregational in management and mainly 
so in constituency ; though it still has Presby- 
terian friends and contributors, and does not 
make its mission churches denominational. It 
has made a mighty impression upon the world's 
heathenism, one fifth of which is reckoned as 
belonging to its field. Its work embraces 
preaching, Sunday-school instruction, church- 
building, colportage, book and tract publication, 
medical and hospital service, a complete educa- 
tional system, and so on. It employs 413 mis- 
sionaries and 1,821 native helpers, occupying 
826 stations and out-stations; has over 37,000 
students in its schools, and annually expends 
more than half a million dollars. 

The American Missionary Association was 
organized in 1846, as a protest against the atti- 



Our Benevolent Societies. 153 

tude of existing societies on questions of caste, 
slavery, etc. Its work at the South has been 
referred to. 1 Its labors in behalf of the Indians 
and the Chinese in this country, and its mis- 
sions in Africa, are of great importance, but 
are overshadowed by the magnitude of the 
Southern work, which now absorbs about four 
fifths of the funds of the Association, and is 
accomplishing results for the colored race and 
for the nation whose value is beyond all calcu- 
lation. 

The American Congregational Union is the 
complement of the Home Missionary Society, 
its chief work being to provide shelter for 
feeble Congregational churches, many of which 
could not without its aid have been saved from 
extinction. Many of the strongest churches of 
the West have been among its beneficiaries. 

The American Education Society was organ- 
ized in 1816, for the purpose of helping young 
men who were preparing for ministerial and 
missionary service. In 1843 the Society for 
the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological 
Education at the West was organized, to aid 

1 See pp. 149, 150. 



154 Our Benevolent Societies. 

institutions of learning. In 1874 the two 
societies were united, under the name of 
the American College and Education Society. 
Both departments of its work are indispensa- 
ble to a complete system of Christian benefi- 
cence. Through one, a million and a half of 
dollars has been supplied to young colleges ; 
through the other, more than seven thousand 
young men have been helped to enter the 
ministry. 

The Congregational Sunday-School and Pub- 
lishing Society is the heir and successor of the 
Congregational Board of Publication and the 
Massachusetts Sunday-School Society. It or- 
ganizes and sustains Sunday-schools in destitute 
places, publishes lesson helps and other Sun- 
day-school supplies, tracts, and general religious 
reading, and especially such works as are calcu- 
lated " to set forth the history and explain the 
principles and polity of the Congregational 
Churches." 

The American Congregational Association, 
organized in 1853, is the conservator of our 
history, literature, and general denominational 
interests. It has secured the erection of the 



Our Benevolent Societies. 155 

Congregational House in Boston, containing 
the offices of our various benevolent societies 
in that city, and the Congregational Library 
of 30,600 volumes and 130,000 pamphlets. 

The New West Education Commission has 
been already referred to. 1 

The Woman's Board of Missions sustains 
schools, teachers, Bible-readers, and mission- 
aries for the work among heathen women, and 
has become one of the most important agencies 
in the foreign-missionary service. 

The Woman's Home Missionary Association, 
organized in 1880, aims " to enlist all the women 
of the Congregational churches in prayer and 
efforts for home missions . . . for the support 
of women as home missionaries and teachers, 
for the aid of home-missionary families," etc. 

Besides sustaining these ten societies of their 
own, Congregationalists have done their full 
share in those which are undenominational, 
such as the Bible Society, the Sunday-School 
Union, etc., as well as in union revival and 
reformatory movements, and in works of general 
and local philanthropy. Plans of union are 

1 See pp. 146, 147. 



156 Evangelism, Education, Journalism. 

always favorite plans with them whenever good 
ends can be reached thereby. 

The evangelists with whose labors so many 
of the revivals of this and the preceding gen- 
eration have been connected can not be claimed 
by any denomination ; yet it is a privilege to 
claim church relationship with five or six of 
the ministers, and with as many of the laymen, 
who have been most successful in this depart- 
ment of Christian work. 

Christian education, as almost every page of 
our history has shown, has ever been one of the 
cherished interests of Congregationalism. Our 
record in this department presents us a list of 
seven Congregational theological seminaries, 
and nearly forty colleges founded wholly or 
chiefly by Congregationalists. 

Congregational journalism, though we have 
not space to write its histoiy, deserves notice 
in this summary of results as evidence of the 
intellectual and literary ability to be found 
in the denomination, and as a mirror of cur- 
rent denominational events. Without compar- 
ing or characterizing individual journals, it is 
sufficient to mention the names of such papers 



Journalism. 157 

as The Congregationalist, The Vermont Chroni- 
cle, The Christian Mirror, The Religious Herald, 
The Advance, The Pacific, some of which have 
more than national reputation and influence, 
and all of which do valuable service in the 
dissemination of church news, the discussion of 
current religious topics, and the promotion of 
Congregational interests. Some states, and 
even some individual churches, have their own 
special papers, more or less extensive, as means 
of facilitating information and fellowship, and 
interchanging thought. Tlie Independent, The 
Christian Union, and other well-known religious 
weeklies, though non-sectarian, were founded 
by Congregationalists. In magazine literature 
we can show The Biblioiheca Sacra, The New 
Englander, The Andover Review, as exponents 
of Congregational scholarship, while each of 
our leading benevolent societies has its own 
periodical as a medium of communication 
with its constituents. 

Congregational literature is extensive and 
extending, as the shelves of the Congregational 
Library, the Catalogue of the Publishing 
Society, and Dr. Dexter's voluminous " Collee- 



158 The Ministry. — Our Polity. 

tions toward a Bibliography of Congregation- 
alism " show. The pen of the ready writer is 
an instrnment as frequently resorted to and as 
effectively wielded by Congregationalists as by 
any class of men in our day ; nor is there any 
reputable department of literature which they 
have not entered. 

The Congregational ministry needs no eulo- 
gium here. Let it speak for itself. Whatever 
it is, or has been, or has done, it has always set 
before itself a high standard of culture, of 
piety, and of professional fidelity. In its list 
of living preachers, teachers, and scholars, there 
are names made famous by splendid talents, 
and others glorious for obscure usefulness. 
We will not attempt to call either roll. 

Our ecclesiastical organization has devel- 
oped step by step into a system which com- 
bines freedom, flexibility, and strength. Each 
church is competent to manage its own inter- 
nal affairs, and is subject to no exterior con- 
trol. Yet it is its privilege in any important 
matter, and its duty in matters affecting other 
churches, such as the ordination, installation, 
or dismission of pastors, to seek their advice 



Our Polity. 159 

and cooperation through a council. Neighbor- 
ing churches organize themselves into confer- 
ences or associations for the discussion of 
themes of common concern. The usual repre- 
sentation in a council, conference, or association 
is the pastor or acting pastor, and one delegate 
from each church. The local conferences or 
associations unite to form general organizations 
of corresponding character, the most common 
limits being those of the states or territories 
in which they meet. In some states the 
ministers have their local associations, for 
their own literary and spiritual improvement, 
in addition to the conferences of churches. 
And now, at last, the National Council, 
organized at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1871, completes 
the system by uniting the several state bodies 
in one comprehensive organization, in which 
the Congregationalism of the whole country 
is represented once in three years, on the 
basis of one delegate to ten churches or 
major fraction of ten, and one from each 
General Association, theological seminary, and 
benevolent society. This completion of our 
ecclesiastical system, on a plan which secures 



160 Our Polity. 

to each church absolute freedom from con- 
trol, and at the same time the fellowship, 
counsel, and cooperation of every other 
church in the entire sisterhood, is another 
bright token of the Congregational Renais- 
sance. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
CONGREGATIONALISM IN OTHER LANDS. 

English Congregationalism did not all emi- 
grate to Holland in the sixteenth century, or 
to America in the seventeenth. There were 
devout believers still left in the old country, 
who maintained the essential principles of our 
faith, especially that one which was ignored by 
both the Presbyterian and the Episcopal estab- 
lishments : the necessity of regeneration as a 
condition of church membership. So far as 
they were Separatists, however, they were so 
against their will. Their fondest hope was 
for uniformity of faith upon strictly scriptural 
ground. But the difficulties of their position 
prevented their making much progress as a 
sect. 

Henry Jacob, a Separatist refugee, returned 
from Holland in 1616, and gathered a small 
congregation in Southwark, to which English 
Independency now traces its origin. The im- 



162 English Congregationalism. 

prisonment of its members, and the emigration 
of Mr. Jacob, and subsequently of his suc- 
cessor, Mr. John Lathrop, to America, showed 
where Congregationalism flourished best in 
those days. The persecution of Non-conform- 
ists under Archbishop Laud served both to 
check dissent in England and to drive Dis- 
senters abroad ; although their voluntary emi- 
gration was made unlawful. The reaction 
against Episcopacy, which brought Puritanism 
into power and sent Laud and his royal master 
to the block, did something for Congregation- 
alism. For although English Puritanism was 
mainly Presbyterian, yet the tendency of the 
revolution was toward freedom and toleration. 
The Independents therefore increased some- 
what in numbers, and very much in boldness. 
The Westminster Assembly — 1643-48 — 
contained a brave handful of Independents 
— less than a dozen among fifty to seventy- 
five Presbyterians. They warred a good 
warfare in behalf of Christian liberty, and 
of what they held to be vital truth ; but 
they were outnumbered and outvoted, and 
one by one gave up the contest. The rugged 



English Congregationalism, 163 

integrity and zeal of the Independents, and 
their devotion to religious liberty, won for 
them the admiration of Cromwell, through 
whose favor they increased in number, and 
many of them obtained civil and ecclesiastical 
offices under the Commonwealth. 

The Savoy Assembly — Independent — met 
in 1658, by public authority, and adopted a 
Declaration substantially re-affirming the 
Westminster Confession, excepting in matters 
of polity, in which it was essentially Congre- 
gational. 

The restoration of royalty was the restora- 
tion of Episcopacy, and brought in another era 
of persecution. The resistance to every species 
of Non - conformity was more strenuous and 
relentless in some respects than any that had 
been met since the days of Henry VIII. The 
Act of Uniformity was re-affirmed with addi- 
tional severities. It required every minister, 
school-master, and Fellow of a college to 
declare his "unfeigned assent and consent to 
all and everything contained and prescribed 
in the Book of Common Prayer, . . . and the 
form or manner of making, ordaining, and 



164 English Congregationalism. 

consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." 
On St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, more than 
two thousand learned and faithful men, the 
flower of the English Protestant clergy, re- 
linquished their places and their means of live- 
lihood, rather than subscribe to such a declara- 
tion. The persecution was directed chiefly 
against the Independents, as the extreme wing 
of Non-conformity. They were again com- 
pelled to hold their meetings in secret, if at 
all. But their enemies took measures to pre- 
vent their meeting at all. The Conventicle 
Act, in 1664, made attendance at dissenting 
services a crime punishable with fine and 
imprisonment, and at the third offence with 
transportation. And finally the Five-Mile Act 
forbade Non-conformists to approach within 
five miles of any corporate town, city, or elec- 
tion borough, unless they would take their 
oath never to "endeavor any alteration of 
government in Church or State." 

These persecutions caused great suffering, but 
did not destroy the faith against which they 
were directed. Independency still grew and 
increased in favor with the people in propor- 



English Congregationalism, 165 

tion as it was hated by the Prelacy and the 
king. As time went on, the cruel laws against 
it were less and less rigidly enforced ; and in 
subsequent reigns they were one by one re- 
pealed. In England, as in our own country, 
political and ecclesiastical enfranchisement 
rose or fell together. As the government 
became more liberal, and the people became 
more free, the Church became more tolerant. 
In course of time English Congregationalism 
was not only suffered to exist without molesta- 
tion, but was even granted something like 
rights and privileges. It has not been ad- 
mitted to an equality with the Established 
Church, and, from the nature of things, can not 
be, so long as an established church exists by 
its side. Yet it is exempt from direct inter- 
ference, and is steadily making progress in 
numbers and in public favor. 

Ecclesiastically, the English Congregation- 
alists incline more to independency than we 
do ; though the churches maintain their fellow- 
ship in an informal way. The Congregational 
Union of England and Wales is a noble organ- 
ization, including oyer 4,300 churches and 



166 English Congregationalism. 

mission-stations, of which about one thousand 
are in Wales. London alone has 252 Congre- 
gational churches, and 164 preaching-stations 
and mission-rooms, providing sittings for 
1,568,000 worshipers. About sixty county 
organizations exist, variously termed Unions 
and Associations, many of them subdivided 
into local bodies. Of the membership of these 
churches I have found no statement. Their 
Year-book, so prolific of information upon 
almost every other denominational topic, is 
strangely silent upon this. If we may assume 
the same average membership as in our own 
churches, — about one hundred, — they are 
numerically almost exactly equal with us. 
Doctrinally, they are in substantial agreement 
with us. The Creed published in the Year- 
book, as expressing the common faith of 
their churches, is very full and explicit, and 
unequivocally evangelical and Calvinistic. In 
missionary and philanthropic zeal they are a 
pattern of good works. Of home-missionary, 
church-erection, and beneficiary organizations 
they have an elaborate system. They sus- 
tain a large number of schools and colleges. 



English Congregationalism, 167 

The London Missionary Society, their agency 
for the foreign work, ante-dates the American 
Board by fifteen years, and surpasses it in the 
amount of annual expenditure. Among their 
church members are to be found not a few 
laymen of distinction, including members of 
Parliament and men eminent in literary and 
professional life ; and, better still, they have 
hosts of earnest workers in every department 
of Christian activity. Among their ministers 
they have numbered such men as John Owen, 
Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, and still num- 
ber some of the ablest of living English 
preachers. 

Ireland and Scotland have also their Congre- 
gational Unions, the former with about thirty 
churches, and the latter with more than one 
hundred. A dozen or more Congregational 
churches are found on the lesser islands of the 
British seas ; while in the various colonies and 
mission fields there are almost seven hundred 
more. 

Our British brethren set us an example 
worthy of all imitation, in their outspoken 
loyalty to Congregational principles and their 



168 English Congregationalism. 

zeal in propagating their chosen polity. Their 
Year-book gives the following as an abstract 
of what the constitutions of their various 
Unions and Associations set forth as to the 
purposes for which they are organized: — 

" Objects : 1. Primary (as set forth in the 
Rules of the Congregational Church Aid and 
Home Missionary Society, in which, with few 
exceptions, they are confederated), (a) To aid 
the weaker churches, with a view to the more 
adequate maintenance of the ministry and the 
increase of their general usefulness. (5) To 
plant and foster new churches where they are 
needed, (c) To provide for the preaching of 
the gospel and other evangelistic work in 
spiritually destitute places. 2. Secondary. 
(a) To promote fraternal intercourse between 
the associated churches. (6) To maintain and 
diffuse the principles of Congregationalism. 
(c) To collect and disseminate information 
relative to the churches and institutions con- 
nected with them, for example, colleges, 
Sunday-schools, missionary and benevolent 
societies, etc. (d) To protect trust property 
belonging to the denomination, (e) To uphold 
and extend civil and religious freedom." 



Newfoundland. 169 

Congregationalism in British North America 
is of course closely connected with that in the 
United States, particularly in its early history. 
The same causes which brought our fathers 
to New England sent others of like faith to 
the more northern provinces; though the 
attractions in that direction were not so strong 
as in the other, and the number drawn by them 
was comparatively small. 

Newfoundland was at one time used to some 
extent as a place of banishment for incorrigible 
Non-conformists. Sometimes the sentence in- 
cluded a prohibition of removal to New 
England or Virginia. Voluntary emigration, 
both from England and from the American 
colonies, carried other Congregational settlers 
there, though not in great numbers. During 
the period of the French occupation, and of 
the wars which were involved in it, emigration 
from this source was of course suspended, to 
be resumed more vigorously after the British 
conquest. Before the time of the American 
Kevolution, Congregational churches had been 
formed at several important places in New- 
foundland, and also in Nova Scotia and in New 



170 Newfoundland, 

Brunswick. Some of these churches were 
made up of the best of New England material. 
Others were composed of rather erratic ele- 
ments. In some a variety of sects was com- 
bined: Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and 
open-communion Baptists : though eventually 
some one sectarian influence, and generally not 
Congregationalism, prevailed. 

The Revolutionary War affected these New 
England settlements in several ways. Many 
of the pastors and laymen who sj^mpathized 
with the American cause returned to New 
England to participate in the war. On the 
other hand, thousands of loyalists left the 
revolting colonies, and took refuge in the king's 
more northerly possessions ; though the emi- 
gration proved of little advantage to the 
countries receiving it. Even after peace had 
been declared, the animosities awakened by the 
war still survived, and were sufficient to pre- 
vent fresh emigration ; while former settlers 
who returned to their Northern homes found 
that their church property had been forfeited, 
and that their democratic church polity was 
as obnoxious to the powers that were as their 
resistance to the king had been. 



Canada. 171 

To this period belongs the career of that 
fervent but erratic young evangelist, Henry 
Alline, a native of Ehode Island. His labors 
were attended with a series of revivals of such 
power that he received the title of "the Second 
"Whitefield." He gathered many churches, 
though he can hardly be said to have organized 
any, as his ideas of individual liberty were not 
compatible with organization. He held some 
views which were harmlessly eccentric and 
others which were more or less mischievous. 
Baptism, he taught, might be by sprinkling or 
by immersion, or indeed might be altogether 
dispensed with, according to the caprice of the 
believer. Many of the churches gathered by 
him, therefore, contained Baptist members, and 
subsequently went over to that denomination. 

Congregationalism in Canada began later, 
but attained a more vigorous growth than in 
any other of the British possessions in North 
America. Emigrants from New England 
carried it into Upper Canada, and English 
residents and missionaries into Lower Canada, 
near the close of the eighteenth century. It 
encountered much prejudice and some serious 



172 Australia. 

persecution from the colonial authorities, and. 
for a long time grew so slowly that fifty years 
ago it scarcely numbered a dozen churches, and 
these chiefly dependent upon the American 
Home Missionary Society. The Reform Bill 
of 1835 relieved them of petty oppression, and 
the development of democratic ideas among 
the people has had the effect there, as else- 
where, of giving to ecclesiastical democracy 
a measure of respectability, if not of popu- 
larity. 

The Canadian churches are organized into a 
Congregational Union, have their own mis- 
sionary societjr, their own religious journals, 
and their own college. 

The churches of New Brunswick and Nova 
Scotia also have their Congregational Union; 
and local organizations of ministers and 
churches have been formed throughout the 
British provinces. Though long ago inde- 
pendent of aid from our churches, they main- 
tain fraternal correspondence with us, as do 
also our brethren in the old country. 

In Australia there are 334 Congregational 
churches, in six Congregational Unions, main- 



Scandinavia. 173 

taining missionary societies, colleges, and reli- 
gious journals. Congregational Unions exist 
also in New Zealand, Natal, South Africa, 
Jamaica, and British Guiana, with an aggregate 
of nearly 140 churches. Congregationalism is 
gaining a foothold here and there upon the 
continent of Europe, and in other lands, 
particularly in connection with British and 
American missionary work ; though it is not 
directly propagated by either the American 
Board or the London Missionary Society. 

Scandinavian Congregationalism is now at- 
tracting attention as the latest, and in many 
respects the most interesting, development of 
our polity. 1 The movement closely resembles 
those which we have had occasion to study in 
the earlier portions of these outlines. 

It has all the essential characteristics of 
a genuine reformation. If we compare it 
with the German Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, we can not but be struck by the 
similarity of causes and events. The ecclesi- 
astical system which derived its name and its 
initial impulse from Luther fell into the same 

1 See " A Wind from the Holy Spirit," by Rev. M. W. Montgomery 
A. H. M. S. 



174 Scandinavia. 

errors and developed the same evils against 
which it had originally been a protest. 
Imposed upon Sweden by compulsion; made 
the religion of the State ; conferring church 
membership upon subjects, irrespective of 
character ; creating a clerical order by appoint- 
ment, personal piety not being a necessary 
qualification for the sacred office ; fostering 
formalism and corruption within itself, and 
resisting every effort toward reformation, it 
could not but repel the truly spiritual. As 
surely as a remnant of genuine believers was 
left in the Church, so surely must they utter 
their testimony and manifest their zeal for 
Gocl. 

But the most striking analogy, and the one 
which most interests us as Congregationalists, 
is that between current events in Sweden and 
those which took place in England three 
hundred years ago. Like the Puritans, the 
Swedish Pietists are protestants against a 
corrupt Protestantism. Like them, they began 
with an attempt to reform the Church without 
forsaking it ; like them, they found the Church 
fixed and hardened in its errors ; like them, 



Swedish Congregationalism. 175 

they were carried on from step to step by the 
force of the movement to which they were 
committed, until they ended in absolute sepa- 
ration ; like them, they met contempt, opposi- 
tion, reviling, misrepresentation, and persecu- 
tion from the Established Church. 

And not only have our Scandinavian brethren 
reached their present position through experi- 
ences similar to those out of which our own 
denomination was born, they have come to 
similar conclusions, doctrinal and ecclesiastical. 
Without taking counsel of flesh and blood, 
without knowing there was any such thing as 
Congregationalism, they found in the New 
Testament the polity which our fathers found 
there, and adopted it. They are evangelical in 
faith; they hold that a church should consist 
of converted persons only, and that only men 
of genuine piety and fitness for the work may 
be ministers ; they make the membership of 
the Church the governing body ; they admit 
only members to the Lord's Supper ; they ex- 
clude unworthy members; they submit every 
question to the test, " How is it written ? " they 
make Christ the only Head of the Church ; 



176 Conclusion. 

they cultivate fellowship among churches ; 
they cooperate in benevolent and missionary 
work. Are not these the traditional tenets of 
our denomination? We may call them Con- 
gregationalists, or they may call us " Mission 
Friends,'* as they love to denominate each 
other ; we are one in faith and in polity, and 
it is well that we are coming to know and 
love each other. The discovery of a hundred 
thousand genuine Congregationalists, organized 
into churches, with their schools, journals, and 
benevolences fully established and active, is 
a notable event in our history. The Home 
Missionary Society has done well to take cog- 
nizance of this movement, and to send its rep- 
resentative x to bear our fraternal greetings to 
these good brethren across the sea, and, finally, 
to appoint him to special work among the 
Scandinavians in this country, now numbering 
three per cent, of our population. 

May we not expect to hear of similar move- 
ments elsewhere ? The tendency of our age is 
toward democracy and the exaltation of the 
individual man. No ecclesiastical system so 

1 Rev. M. W. Montgomery. 



Conclusion. 177 

perfectly harmonizes with this tendency as our 
own. May we not believe that the polity 
which is most scriptural, most apostolic, most 
simple, most rational, which best harmonizes 
with the great providential movements of the 
age, will prevail over the more artificial and 
cumbersome ecclesiasticism of the past? Will 
not the Christianity of the future demand a 
Church without a bishop, as the society of the 
future will demand a State without a king ? 



APPENDIX. 

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL. 

The general synods of the early New Eng- 
land churches were convened to meet special 
exigencies, and were Presbyterial rather than 
Congregational in character. 1 

They were supplanted by the system of local 
and colonial — afterward state — organizations, 
which met statedly, and which, with occasional 
councils, were for more than two hundred 
years the only systematic means provided for 
exercising the fellowship of the churches. 

In 1852 the first national Congregational 
gathering, known as the Albany Convention, 
was held in Albany, N. Y. It resulted in the 
discontinuance of the " Plan of Union," 2 in 
the raising of $50,000 to aid feeble churches in 
building houses of worship, and in the organi- 
zation of the American Congregational Union, 
to prosecute that work systematically. 

1 See pp. S2-S5. 2 See p. 127. 



National Council. 179 

In 1865 the second national convocation, 
known as the Boston Council, met in Boston, 
Mass. It discussed the faith and the polity of 
the churches, and their various departments 
of missionar}^ and benevolent effort, particu- 
larly the home-missionary work at the West 
and South, to which it gave an unprecedented 
impulse. 

In 1870 another national gathering, called 
the Pilgrim Convention, was held in Chicago, 
111., to commemorate the two hundred and 
fiftieth year of Congregationalism in this 
country. 

These occasional assemblies so forcibly dem- 
onstrated the utility and desirability of such 
gatherings that, at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1871, a 
meeting of delegates appointed for that pur- 
pose by the churches, and coming from twenty- 
five different states and territories, formally 
organized The National Council of the 
Congregational Churches of the United 
States. 

Its Constitution declares the purpose of the 
National Council to be " to express and foster 
their [the churches'] substantial unity in doc- 



180 National Council, 

• 
trine, polity, and work; and to consult upon 

the common interests of all the churches, their 
duties in the work of evangelization, the united 
development of their resources, and their rela- 
tion to all parts of the kingdom of Christ." 
It affirms the common belief of the churches 
in " the great doctrines of the Christian faith 
commonly called Evangelical," and in the 
cardinal principles of the Congregational polity, 
— the right of the local church to manage its 
own affairs, and the duty and privilege of 
fellowship between churches. It expressly 
provides that "this National Council shall 
never exercise legislative or judicial authority, 
nor consent to act as a council of reference." 
The Council meets once in three years. The 
ratio of representation is one delegate for every 
ten churches, or major fraction of ten ; a dele- 
gate-at-large from each state organization, 
" and one for each ten thousand communicants 
in the fellowship, and one for a major fraction 
thereof," and one delegate each from " such 
Congregational general societies for Christian 
work, and the faculties of such theological 
seminaries as may be recognized by this 



National Council. 181 

Council, such represeutatives having the right 
of discussion only." 

The specific arrangements for the meetings 
of the Council, with the assignment of topics 
and writers for papers, etc., are in the hands of 
a Provisional Committee of ten, previously 
appointed. Among matters regularly con- 
sidered are the seminaries, the benevolent 
societies, the growth and condition of the 
churches, and correspondence with other eccle- 
siastical bodies, Congregational and non-Con- 
gregational. The remainder of the sessions is 
occupied in the consideration of such topics, 
connected with the kingdom of Christ, as are 
deemed to be most important at the time. 

The Council provides for the publication of 
its minutes and for the issuing annually of The 
Congregational Year-book, containing statistical 
and other facts of current denominational 
interest. For the Constitution, By-laws, and 
Rules of Order in full, see Minutes of the Con- 
gregational Council, or the Rev. A. H. Ross's 
Pocket Manual of Congregationalism. The 
times and places of meeting are : 1871, Ober- 
lin, Ohio ; 1874, New Haven, Connecticut ; 



182 Creeds. 

1877, Detroit, Michigan; 1880, St. Louis, 
Missouri; 1883, Concord, New Hampshire; 
1886, Chicago, Illinois. 

CONGREGATIONAL CREEDS. 

Seven significant words denote the essen- 
tial attributes of Congregationalism : biblical, 
Christian, evangelical, spiritual, Calvinistic, 
democratic, practical. It claims no exclusive 
possession of any of these attributes, but com- 
bines them in certain proportions, and ex- 
presses them through certain methods charac- 
teristic of itself. It sets a high value upon 
truth, and upon clear statements and exposition 
of the truth, as its roll of theologians and of 
martyrs may testify. Yet it has never at- 
tempted the formulation of a distinctively and 
authoritatively Congregational creed, and could 
not do so without ceasing to be itself. 

But while no ecclesiastical officer or organi- 
zation may declare what Congregationalists 
must believe, it is not difficult to state what, 
as a body, they do believe, and have believed 
from the beginning. 

The controversy of the English Puritans 



Creeds. 183 

with the Established Church was not over 
matters of faith, but concerning the corrup- 
tions of the Church, .the false assumptions of 
the clergy, and the idolatrous modes of wor- 
ship. They made no attempt to form a new 
symbol until, at the call of a Presbyterian 
Parliament, the Westminster Assembly met in 
1643. The Assembly was overwhelmingly 
Presbyterian. The handful of English Inde- 
pendents present were a faithful but helpless 
minority, and eventually withdrew. The three 
American Congregationalists invited — Cotton, 
Hooker, and Davenport — did not attend. 1 
Yet, the Confession, the Longer Catechism, and 
the Shorter Catechism, framed by the West- 
minster Assembly, have, with slight modifica- 
tions, been as heartily accepted by Congrega- 
tionalists as by Presbyterians. 

The Synod of 1646-48, in Cambridge, Mass., 2 
adopted the Westminster Confession as a part 
of the Cambridge Platform, excepting what 
related to church government, and protesting 
against some statements respecting election. 

The Savoy Assembly, called together by 

1 Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, vol. i, pp. 727-7G0. 2 See p. 83. 



184 Creeds. 

Cromwell, in the old palace of the Earl of 
Savoy, in London, in 1658, was composed of 
Independents, but adopted, with few altera- 
tions, the Westminster Confession. The 
changes introduced related to polity, Church 
and State, and marriage and divorce. 1 

The Boston Synod, in 1679, 2 adopted the 
Savoy revision of the Westminster Confession ; 
and the Saybrook Synod, in 1708, on behalf 
of the Connecticut Colony, adopted the Bos- 
ton Confession, that is, the Savoy. Thus 
slightly modified, and -four times re-affirmed, the 
Westminster Confession remained as the creed 
of American Congregationalism for more than 
two hundred years. 

The Boston Council of 1865 declared its 
"adherence to the faith and order of the 
apostolic and primitive churches, held by our 
fathers, and substantially as embodied in the 
confessions and platforms which our Synods 
of 1648 and 1680 [Cambridge and Boston] set 
forth or re-affirmed." It also said : " With them 
[the whole Church] we confess our faith in 
God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 

i Creeds of Christendom, i, 833, and ii, 708. 2 See p. 85. 



Creeds. 185 

the only living and true God ; in Jesus Christ, 
the incarnate Word, who is exalted to be our 
Redeemer and King ; and in the Holy Com- 
forter who is present in the Church to regen- 
erate and sanctify the soul. 

" With the whole Church we confess the 
common sinfulness and ruin of our race, and 
acknowledge that it is only through the work 
accomplished by the life and expiatory death 
of Christ that believers in Him are justified 
before God, receive the remission of sins, and 
through the presence and grace of the Holy 
Comforter are delivered from the power of 
sin, and' perfected in holiness. 

" We believe also in the organized and visible 
Church ; in the Ministry of the Word ; in the 
Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; 
in the resurrection of the body, and in the 
final judgment, the issues of which are eternal 
life and everlasting punishment. 

"We receive these truths on the testimony 
of God, given through the prophets and 
apostles, and in the life, the miracles, the 
death, the resurrection of his Son, our divine 
Redeemer, — a testimony preserved for t^e 



186 Creeds. 

Church in the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments, which were composed by holy 
men, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 

The above quotations embrace the essential 
portions of what is called The Burial Sill 
Confession, adopted by the Council while visit- 
ing the site of the first meeting-house of the 
Pilgrims. The Council also adopted and pub- 
lished a statement of Church Polity, known as 
The Boston Platform. 

The National Council of 1871, at Oberlin, 
Ohio, incorporated in the Constitution of the 
body the following declaration concerning 
doctrinal belief: — 

" They [the Congregational churches form- 
ing the Council] agree in belief that the Holy 
Scriptures are the sufficient and only infallible 
rule of religious faith and practice ; their 
interpretation thereof being in substantial 
accordance with the great doctrines of the 
Christian faith, commonly called evangelical, 
held in our churches from the early times, 
and sufficiently set forth by former General 
Councils." 1 

1 Minutes of National Council. 



Creeds. 187 

The National Council of 1880, at St. Louis, 
appointed the following as a Committee to 
nominate a Committee of Twenty-five to pre- 
pare a Declaration of Faith : — 

Rev. Aaron L. Chapin, d.d., Beloit, Wis., 
Chairman ; Rev. Charles D. Barrows, Lowell, 
Mass. ; Rev. Stephen R. Dennen, d.d., New 
Haven, Conn. ; Rev. Nathaniel A. Hyde, D.D., 
Indianapolis, Ind. ; Rev. Frank P. Woodbury, 
Rockford, 111. ; David C. Bell, Minneapolis, 
Minn. ; and Jonathan E. Sargent, ll.d., Con- 
cord, N. H. 

" In making the selection," says the Com- 
mittee, " different sections of the country have 
been drawn upon somewhat in proportion 
to the membership of the Congregationalist 
churches in each. The list embraces men who 
are understood to represent different shades 
of opinion while holding fast to the essential 
truths of the gospel. With a large proportion 
of pastors are joined representatives of theo- 
logical seminaries and colleges, of the religious 
press, and of the missionary work of our 
churches." 

The Commission is as follows : Rev. Julius 



188 Greeds, 

H. Seelye, d.d., Amherst, Mass. ; Rev. Charles 
M. Mead, d.d., Andover, Mass.; Rev. Henry 
M. Dexter, d.d., Boston, Mass. ; Rev. Edmund 
K. Alden, d.d., Boston, Mass. ; Rev. Alexander 
McKenzie, d.d., Cambridge, Mass. ; Rev 
James G. Johnson, d.d., Rutland, Vt. ; Rev 
George P. Fisher, d.d., New Haven, Conn. 
Rev. George L. Walker, d.d., Hartford, Conn. 
Rev. William S. Karr, d.d., Hartford, Conn. 
Prof. George T. Ladd, d.d., Brunswick, Me. 
Rev. Samuel P. Leeds, d.d., Hanover, N. H. 
Rev. David B. Coe, d.d., New York, N. Y. 
Rev. William M. Taylor, d.d., New York, N. Y. 
Rev. Lyman Abbott, d.d., Cornwall-on-the 
Hudson, N. Y. ; Rev. Augustus F. Beard, d.d. 
Syracuse, N. Y. ; Rev. William W. Patton 
d.d., Washington, D. C; Rev. James H. Fair- 
child, d.d., Oberlin, Ohio ; Rev. Israel W. 
Andrews, d.d., Marietta, Ohio ; Rev. Zachary 
Eddy, d.d., Detroit, Mich. ; Rev. James T. 
Hyde, d.d., Chicago, 111. ; Rev. Edward P. 
Goodwin, d.d., Chicago, 111. ; Rev. Alden B. 
Robbins, d.d., Muscatine, Iowa ; Rev. Constans 
L. Goodell, d.d., St. Louis, Mo. ; Rev. Richard 
Cordley, d.d., Emporia, Kan.; Rev. George 
Mooar, d.d., Oakland, Cal. 



Creeds. 189 

The Commission was instructed by the Coun- 
cil "to prepare in the form of a creed or 
catechism, or both, a simple, clear, and com- 
prehensive exposition of the truths of the 
glorious Gospel of the blessed God, for the 
instruction and edification of our churches," — 
the churches having, of course, the right to 
adopt or reject it, as they saw fit. After 
spending more than three years upon their 
work, holding annual sessions, and conferring 
with many representative brethren outside of 
their own number, the Commission, in March, 
1884, published the following Statement of 
Doctrine, as embodying what they believed to 
be the faith of Congregationalists as a whole. 

STATEMENT OF DOCTRINE. 

I. We believe in one God, the Father 
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of 
all things visible and invisible ; 

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, 
who is of one substance with the Father ; by 
whom all things were made ; 

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver 
of Life, who is sent from the Father and Son, 



190 Creeds. 

and who together with the Father and Son is 
worshiped and glorified. 

IL We believe that the providence of God, 
by which he executes his eternal purposes in 
the government of the world, is in and over all 
events ; yet so that the freedom and responsi- 
bility of man are not impaired, and sin is the 
act of -the creature alone. 

III. We believe that man was made in the 
image of God, that he might know, love, and 
obey God, and enjoy him forever; that our first 
parents by disobedience fell under the righteous 
condemnation of God ; and that all men are so 
alienated from God that there is no salvation 
from the guilt and power of sin except through 
God's redeeming grace. 

IV. We believe that God would have all 
men return to him ; that to this end he has 
made himself known, not only through the 
works of nature, the course of his providence, 
and the consciences of men, but also through 
supernatural revelations made especially to a 
chosen people, and above all, when the fulness 
of time was come, through Jesus Christ his 
Son. 



Creeds. 191 

V. We believe that the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments are the record of 
God's revelation of himself in the work of 
redemption ; that they were written by men 
under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit ; 
that they are able to make wise unto salvation ; 
and that they constitute the authoritative 
standard by which religious teaching and 
human conduct are to be regulated and 
judged. 

VI. We believe that the love of God to 
sinful men has found its highest expression in 
the redemptive work of his Son ; who became 
man, uniting his divine nature with our human 
nature in one person ; who was tempted like 
other men, yet without sin ; who by his humili- 
ation, his holy obedience, his sufferings, his 
death on the cross, and his resurrection, became 
a perfect Redeemer ; whose sacrifice of himself 
for the sins of the world declares the righteous- 
ness of God, and is the sole and sufficient 
ground of forgiveness and of reconciliation 
with him. 

VII. We believe that Jesus Christ, after he 
had risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, 



192 Creeds. 

where, as the one mediator between God and 
man, he carries forward his work of saving 
men ; that he sends the Holy Spirit to convict 
them of sin and to lead them to repentance 
and faith ; and that those who through renew- 
ing grace turn to righteousness, and trust in 
Jesus Christ as their Redeemer, receive for his 
sake the forgiveness of their sins and are made 
the children of God. 

VIII. We believe that those who are thus 
regenerated and justified grow in sanctified 
character through fellowship with Christ, the 
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and obedience 
to the truth ; that a holy life is the fruit and 
evidence of saving faith; and that the be- 
liever's hope of continuance in such a life is 
in the preserving grace of God. 

IX. We believe that Jesus Christ came to 
establish among men the kingdom of God, the 
reign of truth and love, righteousness and 
peace; that to Jesus Christ, the Head of this 
kingdom, Christians are directly responsible 
in faith and conduct; and that to him all 
have immediate access without mediatorial or 
priestly intervention. 



Creeds.' 193 

X. We believe that the Church of Christ 
invisible and spiritual, comprises all true be- 
lievers, whose duty it is to associate themselves 
in churches, for the maintenance of worship, 
for the promotion of spiritual growth and fel- 
lowship, and for the conversion of men ; that 
these churches, under the guidance of the 
Holy Scriptures and in fellowship with one 
another, may determine — each for itself — 
their organization, statements of belief, and 
forms of worship, may appoint and set apart 
their own ministers, and should cooperate in 
the work which Christ has committed to them 
for the furtherance of the gospel throughout 
the world. 

XI. We believe in the observance of the 
Lord's Day, as a day of holy rest and worship ; 
in the ministry of the Word ; and in the two 
sacraments, which Christ has appointed for his 
church : Baptism, to be administered to be- 
lievers and their children, as the sign of cleans- 
ing from sin, of union to Christ, and of the 
impartation of the Holy Spirit; and the Lord's 
Supper, as a symbol of his atoning death, a seal 
of its efficacy, and a means whereby he con- 



194 Creeds. 

firms and strengthens the spiritual union and 
communion of believers with himself. 

XII. We believe in the ultimate prevalence 
of the kingdom of Christ over all the earth ; 
in the glorious appearing of the great God and 
our Saviour Jesus Christ ; in the resurrection 
of the dead ; and in a final judgment, the 
issues of which are everlasting punishment 
and everlasting life. 

II. 

The Commission also submitted for the use 
of the churches in the admission of members, 
the following 

CONFESSION OF FAITH. 

" What shall I render unto the Lord for all 
his benefits toward me ? I will take the cup 
of salvation, and call upon the name of the 
Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now 
in the presence of all his people." 

" Whosoever therefore shall confess me be- 
fore men, him will I confess also before my 
Father, which is in heaven. But whosoever 
shall deny me before men, him will I also deny 
before my Father, which is in heaven." 



Creeds. 195 

" For with the heart man belie veth unto 
righteousness; and with the mouth confession 
is made unto salvation." 

Dearly beloved, called of God to be his 
children through Jesus Christ our Lord, you 
are here, that, in the presence of God and his 
people, you may enter into the fellowship and 
communion of his Church. You do truly re- 
pent of your sins ; yqp heartily receive Jesus 
Christ as your crucified Saviour and risen 
Lord ; you consecrate yourself unto God and 
your life to his service ; you accept his Word 
as your law, and his Spirit as your Comforter 
and Guide ; and trusting in his grace to con- 
firm and strengthen you in all goodness, you 
promise to do God's holy will, and to walk with 
this Church in the truth and peace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

Accepting, according to the measure of your 
understanding of it, the system of Christian 
truth held by the churches of our faith and 
order, and by this church into whose fellow- 
ship you now enter, you join with ancient 
saints, with the Church throughout the world, 
and with us, your fellow-believers, in humbly 



196 Creeds. 

and heartily confessing your faith in the 
gospel, saying, — 

I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus 
Christ, his only Son, our Lord ; who was con- 
ceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin 
Mary ; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cru- 
cified, dead, and buried ; the third day he rose 
from the dead ; he ascended into heaven ; and 
sitteth at the right hand of God the Father 
Almighty ; from thence he shall come to judge 
the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy 
Ghost ; the holy catholic Church ; the com- 
munion of saints ; the forgiveness of sins ; the 
resurrection of the body ; and the life ever- 
lasting. Amen. 

(Then should baptism be administered to those who have not been 
baptized. Then should those rise who would unite with the Church 
by letter. To them the minister should say : — 

Confessing the Lord whom we unitedly wor- 
ship, you do now renew your self-consecration, 
and join with us cordially in this, our Christian 
faith and covenant.) 

(The members of the Church present should rise.) 

We welcome you into our fellowship. We 



Creeds. 197 

promise to watch over you with Christian love. 
God grant that, loving and being loved, serving 
and being served, blessing and being blessed, 
we may be prepared, while we dwell together 
on earth, for the perfect communion of the 
saints in heaven. 

" Now the God of peace, that brought again 
from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great 
Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of 
the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in 
every good work to do his will, working in you 
that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through 
Jesus Christ ; to whom be glory forever and 
ever. Amen." 

(Jude 24, 25 is proposed as an alternative benediction.) 

On this result, reached after full and pro- 
longed deliberation, the Commission invoke the 
kindly consideration of their brethren, and 
the blessing of Almighty God. 

The report was signed by all but three of 
the members of the Commission. 

The Creed was discussed with freedom, and 
in some quarters with severity ; but it received 
the endorsement of the leading journals of the 



198 Creeds. 

denomination, and lias been adopted by many 
churches and by some state associations. Its 
ultimate fate time only can determine. 

The Congregational Union of England and 
Wales adopted in 1833, and published annu- 
ally in their Year-book a statement of doctrine 
and of ecclesiastical principles which they 
with good reason vouch for as stating "the 
leading doctrines of faith and order maintained 
by Congregational churches in general," add- 
ing the pertinent remark that "notwith- 
standing their jealousy of subscription to 
creeds and articles, and their disapproval of 
the imposition of any human standard, whether 
of faith or of discipline, they are far more 
agreed in their doctrines and practices than 
any church which enjoins subscription and 
enforces a human standard of orthodoxy." 
The creed may be found in any number of 
the Year-book, and in Schaff's Creeds of 
Christendom, iii, 730. A similar statement 
of Faith, though briefer and less explicit upon 
theological points, is published by the Con- 
gregational Union of Ontario and Quebec. 



Literature. 199 

CONGREGATIONAL LITERATURE. 

To give a list of all the works on Congrega- 
tionalism which are worth the reading would 
require a volume larger than the foregoing. 
Yet there are a few books which are con- 
veniently accessible to most readers, and of 
which some laymen, at least, may be glad to 
be reminded. 

For general historical facts bearing upon 
religious and ecclesiastical matters in England 
and America, any good histories of those 
countries will suffice. 

For general facts pertaining to the develop- 
ment and progress of the Christian Church, 
its various sects, faiths, heresies, and condi- 
tions, such ecclesiastical histories as Neander's, 
Mosheim's, or SchafT's may be found in almost 
any clergyman's libraiy. Ranke's History of 
the Popes, and Ranke's or D'Aubigne's History 
of the Reformation, suffice for the topics 
indicated by their titles. 

The Rev. George Punchard's History of Con- 
gregationalism, 5 vols. 12 mo., and the Rev. Dr. 
Henry M. Dexter's Congregationalism as Seen 



200 Literature. 

in its Literature, 1 vol. large 8vo., admirably 
cover this department. 

Palfrey's History of New England, Leet's 
Ecclesiastical History of New England, the Rev. 
Dr. Leonard Bacon's Genesis of the New Eng- 
land Churches, the Rev. Dr. Joseph S. Clark's 
Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, 
give history within narrower limits. 

For the statement or discussion of Congrega- 
tional principles, we have " Congregationalism : 
What it is ; Whence it is ; How it Works," by 
the Rev. H. M. Dexter, d.d ; also, by the same 
author, " A Hand-book of Congregationalism " ; 
U A View of Congregationalism," by the Rev. 
George Punchard; Uhden's New England The- 
ocracy ; Coleman's Church without a Bishop ; 
and small Manuals of Congregationalism, by 
the Rev. E. Pond, d.d., the Rev. J. E. Roy, d.d., 
the Rev. A. Hastings Ross, and others ; also the 
Congregational Dictionary of the Rev. Preston 
Cummings. Many public and college libraries, 
and some private collections, contain Mather's 
Magnalia and Ratio Disciplinse, and some of 
the works of those fathers of Congregational- 
ism, John Robinson, John Cotton, and Richard 
Hooker. 



Literature. 201 

Orations and speeches on the Pilgrim 
Fathers may be found in the published works 
of Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, W. H. 
Seward, W. M. Evarts, R. S. Storrs, D.D., etc. 

Much valuable literature upon Congrega- 
tional subjects may be found in the volumes 
of The New Englander, The Bibliotheca Sacra, 
The Congregational Quarterly, the Congrega- 
tional • Year-books, the publications of the 
various missionary and benevolent societies, 
and the files of The Congregationalism The 
Advance, and other journals of the denomina- 
tion. 

A small, compact, and not too expensive 
Congregational library, putting the cream of 
our literature into a score of brief, readable 
volumes, would be a boon to the denomination 
at large, and especially to the next writer of 
historical outlines. 



I N D BX 



Page 

Acts of Parliament against Non-conformists 164 

Albany Convention • , 178 

Albany Fund 178 

American Board 152 

Amherst College founded 110 

American Missionary Association 149, 152 

Amsterdam, Pilgrims in -»• 56, 57 

Andover Seminary founded Ill 

Antinomian Controversy ^^^ 

Associations organized 138 

Australia, Congregationalism in 172 

Atkinson, Rev. George H 145 

Barcjowe, Henry 46 

Bangor Seminary founded 108 

Beloit College 138 

Bermuda Islands, Congregationalism in 64 

Bible Translations under Henry VHI 31-34 

Bowdoin College founded 108 

Boston Council of 1865 179 

Boston Proposals of 1705 99 

Boston Synods, 1657, 1662, 1679 .84 

Bradford, Gov. William 67 

Brewster, Elder William 49, 51 

Browne, Robert 43-45 

Burial Hill Confession, 1865 186 

Cambridge Platform 83,183 

Cambridge Synod of 1646 83, 183 

California, Congregationalism in 143 

Canada, Congregational history of 171, 172 

Carleton College founded 141 

Carver, Gov. John 62 

Church, Congregational, definition of 1 

Clyfton, Richard 52, 53 

Compact, Mayflower, 1620 61 

College Aid Society 163 



ii Index. 



Page 

Colorado and Colorado College 147 

Congregational Association, American , 154 

Congregationalism at the South 116 

Congregationalism in Connecticut 112, 113 

Congregationalism in Sweden 174-176 

Congregationalism of the early churches 1-13 

Congregationalism, Native American 78-93 

Congregationalism in England and Wales , 165 

Congregational Union (Church-building Society) 153 

Congregational Renaissance 136-150 

Consociationism 97, 101 

Conventicle Act 164 

Corruptions of the English Church 17 

Councils, early, iu New England 82-85 

Creeds, Congregational 182-198 

Cushman, Robert 68 

D^fcota, Congregationalism in . . .147 

Dartmouth College founded 109 

Delft Haven, Pilgrims leaving 61 

Donatists, Congregationalism of 10 

Drury College founded 139 

Educational Institutions , .... 85, 153 

Education Society 146 

Edward VI, as a Reformer 34 

Elizabeth and Non-conformity 36, 37 

Eminent American Congregationalists 72, 134 

Emmons, Dr. Nathaniel , 117 

England, Pagan and Papal 14-17 

England, Congregational history of 161-168 

Episcopal Controversy 93 

Fellowship of the early churches 58, 59 

First printing-press, book, and newspaper in America 86 

Five-mile Act 164 

Great Awakening 104, 105 

Greenwood, John 45 

Half-way Covenant 84 

Half-way Covenant, effects of 96 

Harvard College founded 85, 86 

Henry VIII, as a Papist 28, 29 

Henry VIII, as Pope 29 

Hierarchical tendencies in early church 5-7 

Home Missionary Society 132, 151 

Illinois, Congregationalism in 129, 130 

Illinois College founded 130 



Index. iii 



Page 

Indiana, Congregationalism in 129 

Indian Question in early days 95, 96 

Iowa Band and Congregationalism 139 

Iowa College founded 140 

Ireland and Scotland, Congregationalism in 167 

Jacob, Henry 161 

James I and Non-conformity 48, 49 

Johnson, Francis 46, 47 

Journalism, Congregational 156, 157 

Kansas, Congregationalism in 142 

Lambert, Francis 43 

Leyden, Pilgrims in 57, 58 

Leyden, departure from 60 

Leyden Church, Congregationalism of 59 

Literature, Congregational 157,199 

Lollards and Lollardism 22-26 

Lollardism of Henry VIII 30 

Luciferians, Congregationalism of 11 

Maine, early churches in 74 

Maine after the Revolution 108 

Marietta College founded 128 

Martin Marprelate Tracts 47 

Martyrs under Henry VIII 28 

Martyrs under Bloody Mary 35, 36 

Martyrs under Elizabeth 48 

Massachusetts Bay Colony and churches 68-72 

Middleburg Church 44 

Middlebury College 110 

Ministry, the Congregational, traits of 158 

Missionary Societies, early, in New England 122-124 

Missouri, Congregationalism in 139 

Nansemond Church, Virginia 64 

National Council, history of 178-182 

Nebraska, Congregationalism in 142, 143 

New Congregational Creed 186 

New England Theocracy 87-89 

Newfoundland, Congregationalism in 169, 170 

New Hampshire, early churches 73 

New Hampshire, later growth 108, 109 

New Jersey, Congregationalism in 76 

New Providence Island, Congregationalism in ... 65 

Newspaper, first in America 86 

New York, Congregationalism in 76 

New West, Congregationalism in 145-148 



iv Index. 



Page 

New West Educational Commission 146, 155 

Novatians, Congregationalism of 9 

Oberlin College founded 129 

Ohio, Congregationalism in 128, 129 

Oregon, Congregationalism in 144,145 

Pacific University .145 

Paulicians, Congregationalism of 11 

Penry, John 46 

Persecution of Quakers, etc 92 

Pilgrims, Migrations of t 53-62 

Pilgrim Convention, 1870 179 

Plantation Covenants 90 

Plan of Union 127 

Plymouth Colony and Church 66-69 

Polity, principles of 1-5 

Polity, development of 158-160 

" Poor-Priests " 21, 22 

Presbyterianism, development of, in America <. . 124-126 

Presbyterianism and Congregationalism 114, 124, 138 

Puritans, first so-called 11 

Puritans, English, subdivisions of 38, 39 

Quakers, persecutions of . 92 

Reformation in England » . . . . 27, 28 

Rhode Island, settlement of 74 

Rhode Island Congregationalism Ill, 112 

Ripon College founded 138 

Roger Williams 74, 92 

Robinson, Rev. John 53, 57, 67 

Ruling Eldership 53,80 

Savoy Assembly and Declaration 163,183 

Saybrook Synod and Platform 101, 137 

Scandinavian Congregationalism 173-175 

Scrooby, Pilgrims in 49, 50 

Separatists, the first 9-11 

Separatism in England 38-43 

South, Congregationalism in the 148 

Southampton, England, Pilgrims at 61 

Speedwell, Pilgrims in 61 

Sunday-School and Publishing Society 154 

Synods of the early New England churches 82-85 

Swedish Mission Churches 176 

Tabor College founded 140 

Unitarian Controversy 118-121 

Usages, early Congregational, In New England . ....... .79-82 



Index, 



Page 

Utah, Congregationalism in , 148 

Vermont, Congregationalism in 109, 110 

Virginia, Congregationalism in 63, 64 

Waldenses, Congregationalism of 12, 13 

Washington Territory, Congregationalism in .... 145 

Westminster Assembly and Confession 162, 183 

Williams College founded 110 

Whitman, Dr. Marcus 144 

Wiclif , John 18-21 

Wisconsin, Congregationalism in 130, 131 

Wise, Rev. John 102 

Woman's Board of Missions 155 

Woman's Home Missionary Association 155 

Yale College 113,114 



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